The red and the black; a chronicle of 1830

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THE RED AND THE BLACK

A CHRONICLE OF 1830

THE RED and

THE BLACK

a Cbronicle of 1830

By
STENDHAL

Translated by HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A.,

Late Scholar Corpus Christi College, Oxford

LONDON

/ KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd

New York: E, P. DUTTON and Co.
1916

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INTRODUCTION

SOME slight sketch of the life and character of
Stendhal is particularly necessary to an understanding
of Le Rouge et Le Noir {The Red and the Black) not
so much as being the formal stuffing of which introduc-
tions are made, but because the book as a book stands
in the most intimate relation to the author's life and
character. The hero, Julien, is no doubt, viewed
superficially, a cad, a scoundrel, an assassin, albeit a
person who will alternate the moist eye of the senti-
mentalist with the ferocious grin of the beast of
prey. But Stendhal so far from putting forward any
excuses makes a specific point of wallowing defiantly
in his own alleged wickedness. " Even assuming that
Julien is a villain and that it is my portrait," he wrote
shortly after the publication of the book, " why quarrel
with me. In the time of the Emperor, Julien would
have passed for a very honest man. I lived in the
time of the Emperor. So but what does it matter ? "
Henri Beyle was born in 1783 in Grenoble in
Dauphiny, the son of a royalist lawyer, situated on
the borderland between the gentry and that bourgeoisie
which our author was subsequently to chastise with that
malice peculiar to those who spring themselves from the
class which they despise. The boy's character was a
compound of sensibility and hard rebelliousness, virility
and introspection. Orphaned of his mother at the age

vi. INTRODUCTION

of seven, hated by his father and unpopular with his
schoolmates, he spent the orthodox unhappy childhood
of the artistic temperament. Winning a scholarship at
the Ecole Polytechnique at the age of sixteen he pro-
ceeded to Paris, where with characteristic independence
he refused to attend the college classes and set himself
to study privately in his solitary rooms.

In 1800 the influence of his relative M. Daru pro-
cured him a commission in the French Army, and the
Marengo campaign gave him an opportunity of practis-
ing that Napoleonic worship to which throughout his life
he remained consistently faithful, for the operation of the
philosophical materialism of the French sceptics on an
essentially logical and mathematical mind soon swept
away all competing claimants for his religious adoration;
Almost from his childhood, moreover, he had abomin-
ated the Jesuits, and " Papism is the source of all
crimes," was throughout his life one of his favourite
maxims.

After the army's triumphant entry into Milan, Beyle
returned to Grenoble on furlough, whence he dashed off
to Paris in pursuit of a young woman to whom he was
paying some attention, resigned his commission in the
army and set himself to study " with the view of becoming
a great man." It is in this period that we find the most
marked development in Beyle's enthusiasm of psy-
chology. This tendancy sprang primarily no doubt
from his own introspection. For throughout his
life Beyle enjoyed the indisputable and at times
dubious luxury of a double consciousness. He in-
variably carried inside his brain a psychological mirror
which reflected every phrase of his emotion with
scientific accuracy. And simultaneously, the critical

INTRODUCTION vii.

spirit, half-genie, half-demon inside his brain, would
survey in the semi-detached mood of a keenly interested
spectator, the actual emotion itself, applaud or con-
demn it as the case might be, and ticket the verdict
with ample commentations in the psychological register
of its own analysis.

But this trend to psychology, while as we have
seen, to some extent, the natural development of mere
self-analysis was also tinged with the spirit of self-
preservation. With a mind, which in spite of its natural
physical courage was morbidly susceptible to ridicule
and was only too frequently the dupe of the fear of
being duped, Stendhal would scent an enemy in every
friend, and as a mere matter of self-protection set
himself to penetrate the secret of every character with
which he came into contact. One is also justified in
taking into account an honest intellectual enthusiasm
which found its vent in deciphering the rarer and more
precious manuscripts of the "human document."

With the exception of a stay in Marseilles, with his
first mistress Melanie Guilhert (" a charming actress who
had the most refined sentiments and to whom I never
gave a sou,") and a subsequent sojourn in Grenoble,
Stendhal remained in Paris till 1806, living so far as was
permitted by the modest allowance of his niggard father
the full life of the literary temperament. The essence^
however, of his character was that he was at the same
time a man of imagination and a man of action. We
consequently find him serving in the Napoleonic cam-
paigns of 1806, 1809 and 1 81 2. He was present at the
Battle of Jena, came several times into personal contact
with Napoleon, discharged with singular efficiency the
administration of the State of Brunswick, and retained

viii. INTRODUCTION

his sang-froid and his bravery during the whole of the
panic-stricken retreat of the Moscow campaign.

It is, moreover, to this period that we date Stendhal's
liaison with Mme. Daru the wife of his aged relative,
M. Daru. This particular intrigue has, moreover, a
certain psychological importance in that Mme. Daru
constituted the model on whom Mathilde de la Mole was
drawn in The Red and the Black. The student and
historian consequently who is anxious to check how far
the novelist is drawing on his experience and how far on
his imagination can compare with profit the description
of the Mathilde episode in The Red and the Black with
those sections in Stendhal's Journal entitled the Life
and Sentiments of Silencious Harry, Memoirs of my Life
during my Amour with Countess Palfy, and also with
the posthumous fragment, Le Consultation de Banti, a
piece of methodical deliberation on the pressing question.
" Dois-je ou ne dois-je pas avoir la duchesse ? " written
with all the documentary coldness of a Government
report. It is characteristic that both Bansi and Julien
decide in the affirmative as a matter of abstract principle.
For they both feel that they must necessarily reproach
themselves in after life if they miss so signal an
opportunity.

Disgusted by the Restoration, Stendhal migrated in
1 8 14 to Milan, his favourite town in Europe, whose rich
and varied life he savoured to the full from the cele-
brated ices in the entreates of the opera, to the re-
ciprocated interest of Mme. Angelina Pietragrua (the
Duchesse de Sansererina of the Chartreuse of Parma),
" a sublime wanton a la Lucrezia Borgia " who would
appear to have deceived him systematically. It was in
Milan that Stendhal first began to write for publication,

INTRODUCTION ix.

producing in 1814 The Lives of Haydn and Mozart, and
in 18 17 a series of travel sketches, Rome, Naples, Florence,
which was published in London.

It was in Milan also than Stendhal first nursed the
abstract thrills of his grand passion for Metilde Countess
Dunbowska, whose angelic sweetness would seem to
have served at any rate to some extent as a prototype
to the character of Mme. de Renal. In 1821 the novelist
was expelled from Milan on the apparently unfounded
accusation of being a French spy. It is typical of that
mixture of brutal sensuality and rarefied sentimentalism
which is one of the most fascinating features of Stendhal's
character, that even though he had never loved more
than the lady's heart, he should have remained for three
years faithful to this mistress of his ideal.

In 1822 Stendhal published his treatise, De l'Amour,
a practical scientific treatise on the erotic emotion by
an author who possessed the unusual advantage of
being at the same time an acute psychologist and a
brilliant man of the world, who could test abstract
theories by concrete practice and could co-ordinate what
he had felt in himself and observe in others into broad
general principles.

In 1825 Stendhal plunging vigorously into the con-
troversy between the Classicists and the Romanticists,
published his celebrated pamphlet, Racine and Shakes-
peare, in which he vindicated with successful crispness
the claims of live verse against sterotyped couplets and
of modern analysis against historical tradition. His
next work was the Life of Rossini, whom he had known
personally in Milan, while in 1827 he published his first
novel Armance, which, while not equal to the author's
greatest work, give none the less good promise of that

X.

INTRODUCTION

analytical dash which he was subsequently to manifest.
After Armance come the well-known Promenades
Rome, while the Stendhalian masterpiece Le Rouge et
Le Noir was presented in 1830 to an unappreciative
public.

Enthusiasm for this book is the infallible test of your
true Stendhalian. Some critics may prefer, possibly,
the more Jamesian delicacy of Armance, and others
fortified by the example of Goethe may avow their
predilection for The Chartreuse de Parme with all the
jeune premier charm of its amiable hero. But in our
view no book by Stendhal is capable of giving the
reader such intellectual thrills as that work which has
been adjudged to be his greatest by Balzac, by Taine,
by Bourget. Certainly no other book by Stendal than
that which has conjured up Rougistes in all countries in
Europe has been the object of a cult in itself. We
doubt, moreover, if there is any other modern book
whether by Stendhal or any one else, which has actually
been learnt by heart by its devotees, who, if we may
borrow the story told by M. Paul Bourget, are ac-
customed to challenge the authenticity of each other's
knowledge by starting off with some random passage
only to find it immediately taken up, as though the
book had been the very Bible itself.

The more personal appeal of what is perhaps the
greatest romance of the intellect ever written lies in
the character of Julien, its villain-hero. In view of the
identification of Julien with Stendal himself to which
we have already alluded, it is only fair to state that
Stendhal does not appear to have ever been a tutor in
a bourgeois family, nor does history relate his ever
having made any attempt at the homicide of a woman.

INTRODUCTION xi.

So far, in fact, as what we may call the external physical
basis of the story is concerned, the material is supplied
not by the life of the author, but by the life of a young
student of Besancon, of the name of Berthet, who duly
expiated on the threshold that crime which supplied the
plot of this immortal novel. But the soul, the brain of
Julien is not Berthet but Beyle. And what indeed is
the whole book if not a vindication of beylisme, if we
may use the word, coined by the man himself for his
own outlook on life ? For the procedure of Stendhal
would seem to have placed his own self in his hero's
shoes, to have lived in imagination his whole life, and to
have recorded his experience with a wealth of analytic
detail, which in spite of some arrogance, is yet both
honest and scientific.

And the life of this scoundrel, this ingrate, this assassin,
certainly seems to have been eminently worth living.
In its line, indeed, it constitutes a veritable triumph of
idealism, a positive monument of " self-help." For
judged by the code of the Revolution, when the career
was open to talents, the goodness or badness of a man
was determined by the use he made of his opportunities.
Efficiency was the supreme test of virtue, as was failure
the one brand of unworthiness. And measured by these
values Julien ranks high as an ethical saint. For does
he not sacrifice everything to the forgiving of his char-
acter and the hammering out of his career ? He is by
nature nervous, he forces himself to be courageous,
fighting a duel or capturing a woman, less out of thirst
for blood or hunger for flesh, than because he thinks it
due to his own parvenu self-respect to give himself
some concrete proof on his own moral force. " Pose
and affection " will sneer those enemies whom he will

xii. INTRODUCTION

have to-day as assuredly as he had them in his lifetime,
the smug bourgeois and Valenods of our present age.
But the spirit of Julien will retort, " I made myself
master of my affectation and I succeeded in my pose."
And will he not have logic on his side ? For what after
all is pose but the pursuit of a subjective ideal, grotesque
no doubt in failure, but dignified by its success. And
as M. Gaultier has shown in his book on Bovarysme, is
not all human progress simply the deliberate change
from what one is, into what one is not yet, but what
nevertheless one has a tendency to be ? Viewed from
this standpoint Julien's character is what one feels
justified in calling a bond fide pose. For speaking
broadly his character is two-fold, half-sensitive tender-
ness, half ferocious ambition, and his pose simply con-
sists in the subordination of his softer qualities for the
more effective realization of his harder. Considered
on these lines Le Rouge et Le Noir stands pre-
eminent in European literature as the tragedy of energy
and ambition, the epic of the struggle for existence, the
modern Bible of Nietzchean self-discipline. And from
the sheer romantic aspect also the book has its own
peculiar charm. How truly poetic, for instance, are the
passages where Julien takes his own mind alone into
the mountains, plots out his own fate, and symbolizes
his own solitary life in the lonely circlings of a predatory
hawk.

Julien's enemies will no doubt taunt him with his
introspection, while they point to a character distorted,
so they say, by the eternal mirror of its own conscious-
ness. Yet it should be remembered that Julien lived in
an age when introspection had, so to speak, been only
ecently invented, and Byronism and Wertherism were

INTRODUCTION xiii.

the stock food of artistic temperaments. In the case of
julien, moreover, even though his own criticisms on his
own acts were to some extent as important to him as
the actual acts themselves, his introspection was more
a strength than a weakness and never blunted the edge
of his drastic action. Compare, for instance, the char-
acter of Julien with the character of Robert Greslou,
the hero of Bourget's Le Disciple, and the nearest
analogue to Julien in fin de siecle literature, and one
will appreciate at once the difference between health
and decadence, virility and hysteria.

One of the most essential features of the book, how-
ever, is the swing of the pendulum between Julien's
ambition and Julien's tenderness. For our hunter is
quite frequently caught in his own traps, so that he falls
genuinely in love with the woman whom, as a matter
of abstract principle, he had specifically set himself to
conquer. The book consequently as a romance of
love, ranks almost as high as it does as a romance of
ambition. The final idyll in prison with Mme. de Renal,
in particular, is one of the sweetest and purest in
literature, painted in colours too true ever to be florid,
steeped in a sentiment too deep ever to be mawkish.
As moreover, orthodox and surburban minds tend to
regard all French novels as specifically devoted to
obscene wallowings, it seems only relevant to mention
that Stendhal at any rate never finds in sensualism any
inspiration for ecstatic rhapsodies, and that he narrates
the most specific episodes in the chastest style
imaginable.

Though too the sinister figure of the carpenter's son
looms large over the book, the characterization of all
the other personages is portrayed with consummate

xiv. INTRODUCTION

brilliancy. For Stendhal standing first outside his
characters with all the sceptical scrutiny of a detached
observer, then goes deep inside them so that he de-
scribes not merely what they do, but why they do it,
not merely what they think, but why they think it,
while he assigns their respective share to innate dis-
position, accident, and environment, and criticizes his
creations with an irony that is only occasionally
benevolent. For it must be confessed that Stendhal
approves of extremely few people. True scion of the
middle-classes he hates the bourgeois because he is
bourgeois, and the aristocrat because he is aristocrat.
Nevertheless, as a gallery of the most varied characters,
patricians and plebeians, prudes and profligates, Jesuits
and Jansenists, Kings and coachmen, bishops and
bourgeois, whose mutual difference acts as a most
effective foil to each other's reality, Le Rouge et Le Noir
will beat any novel outside Balzac.

We would mention in particular those two contrasted
figures, Mme. de R6nal the bourgeoise passionee, and
Matilde de la Mole the noble damozel who enters into
her intrigue out of a deliberate wish to emulate the
exploits of a romantic ancestress. But after all these
individuals stand out not so much because their char-
acterization is better than that of their fellow-personages,
but because it is more elaborate. Even such minor
characters, for instance, as de Frilair, the lascivious
Jesuit, Noiraud, the avaricious gaoler, Mme. de Fervaqus,
the amoristic prude, are all in their respective ways real,
vivid, convincing, no mere padded figures of the im-
agination, but observed actualities swung from the
lived life en the written page.

The style of Stendhal is noticeable from its simplicity,

INTRODUCTION xv.

clear and cold, devoid of all literary artifice, characteristic
of his analytic purpose. He is strenuous in his avoid-
ance of affection. Though, however, he never holds
out his style as an aesthetic delight in itself, he reaches
occasionally passages of a rare and simple beauty. We
would refer in particular to the description of Julien in
the mountains, which we have already mentioned, and
to the short but impressive death scene. His habit,
however, of using language as a means and never as an
end, occasionally revenges itself upon him in places
where the style, though intelligible, is none the less
slovenly, anacoluthic, almost Thucydidean.

After the publication of Le Rouge et Le Noir Stendhal
was forced by his financial embarrassment to leave Paris
and take up the post of consul at Trieste. Driven from
this position by the intrigues of a vindictive Church he
was transferred to Civita Vecchia where he remainted till
1835, solacing his ennui by the compilation of his auto-
biography and thinking seriously of marriage with the
rich and highly respectable daughter of his laundress.
He then returned to Paris where he remained till 1842,
where he died suddenly at the age of fifty-nine in the
full swiug of all his mental and physical activities.

His later works included, La Chartreuse de Panne,
Lucien, Leuwen and Lamiel, of which the Chartreuse is
the most celebrated, but Lamiel certainly the most
sprightly. But it is on Le Rouge et Le Noir that his
fame as a novelist is the most firmly based. It is with
this most personal document, this record of his ex-
periences and emotions that he lives identified, just as
D'Annunzio will live identified with // Fuoco or Mr.
Wells with the New Macchiavelli. Le Rouge et Le Noir
js the greatest novel of its age and one of the greatest

xvi. INTRODUCTION

novels of the whole nineteenth century. It is full to the

brim of intellect and adventure, introspection and action,

youth, romance, tenderness, cynicism and rebellion. It

is in a word the intellectual quintessence of the

Napoleonic era.

HORACE B. SAMUEL.
Temple,
Oct., 1913.

The Red and the Black

A CHRONICLE OF i83o

CHAPTER I

A SMALL TOWN

Put thousands together less bad,
But the cage less gay. Hobbs,

The little town of Verrieres can pass for one of the prettiest
in Franche-Comte\ Its white houses with their pointed red-
tiled roofs stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest
undulations are marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The
Doubs flows to within some hundred feet above its fortifications,
which were built long ago by the Spaniards, and are now in
ruins.

Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain
which is one of the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks
of the Verra are covered with snow from the beginning of the
October frosts. A torrent which rushes down from the
mountains traverses Verrieres before throwing itself into the
Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number of
saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain
prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more
peasant than bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws
which have enriched this little town. It is the manufacture of
painted tiles, called Mulhouse tiles, that is responsible for
that general affluence which has caused the facades of nearly
all the houses in Verrieres to be rebuilt since the fall of
Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned

i

2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

by the din of a strident machine of terrifying aspect.
Twenty heavy hammers which fall with a noise that makes
the paved floor tremble, are lifted up by a wheel set in
motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers manufactures
every day I don't know how many thousands of nails.
The little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into
nails by these enormous hammers, are put in position by
fresh pretty young girls. This labour so rough at first sight is
one of the industries which most surprises the traveller who
penetrates for the first time the mountains which separate
France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrieres, the traveller
asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody
who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone
"Eh I it belongs to M. the Mayor."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-
Rue of Verrieres which goes on an upward incline from the
bank of the Doubs to nearly as far as the summit of the hill,
it is a hundred to one that he will see a big man with a busy
and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off.
His hair is grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight
of several Orders, has a large forehead and an aquiline nose,
and if you take him all round, his features are not devoid of
certain regularity. One might even think on the first
inspection that it combines with the dignity of the village
mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is
appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the
traveller from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-
satisfaction and self-complacency mingled with an almost
indefinable narrowness and lack of inspiration. One realises
at last that this man's talent is limited to seeing that he is
paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his own debts
at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Renal, the mayor of Verrieres. After having
crossed the road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral
residence and disappears from the eye of the traveller. But
if the latter continues to walk a hundred steps further up, he
will perceive a house with a fairly fine appearance, with some
magnificent gardens behind an iron grill belonging to the
house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the hills
of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes.

A SMALL TOWN 3

This view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential
atmosphere of petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning
to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is
to the profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that
the mayor of Verrieres owes this fine residence of hewn stone
which he is just finishing. His family is said to be Spanish
and ancient, and is alleged to have been established in the
country well before the conquest of Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815
made him mayor of Verrieres. The terraced walls of this
magnificent garden which descends to the Doubs, plateau by
plateau, also represent the reward of M. de Renal's proficiency
in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find in France those
picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing towns
of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The
more walls you build in Franche-Comte and the more you
fortify your estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will
acquire on the respect of your neighbours. Another reason
for the admiration due to M. de Renal's gardens and their
numerous walls, is the fact that he has purchased, through
sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels of the ground
on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose
singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when
you entered Verrieres, and where you notice the name of
SOREL written in gigantic characters on the chief beam of the
roof, used to occupy six years ago that precise space on which
is now reared the wall of the fourth terrace in M. de Renal's
gardens.

Proud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to
negotiate with that tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He
had to pay him in good solid golden louis before he could
induce him to transfer his workshop elsewhere. As to the
public stream which supplied the motive power for the saw-
mill, M. de Renal obtained its diversion, thanks to the
influence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was
accorded him after the election of 182 .

He gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously
held, five hundred yards lower down on the banks of the
Doubs. Although this position was much more advantageous
for his pine-plank trade, father Sorel (as he is called since he

4 THE RED AND THE BLACK

has become rich) knew how to exploit the impatience and
mania for landed ownership which animated his neighbour
to the tune of six thousand francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wise-
acres of the locality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years
later, as M. de Renal was coming back from church in his
mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel smiling at him, as he
stared at him some distance away surrounded by his three
sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul
of the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he
could have obtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.

In order to win the public esteem of Verrieres it is essential
that, though you should build as many walls as you can, you
should not adopt some plan imported from Italy by those
masons who cross the passes of the Jura in the spring on
their way to Paris. Such an innovation would bring down
upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal reputation
for wrongheadedness, and he will be lost for ever in the sight
of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem
in Franche-Comte.

As a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the
place the most offensive despotism. It is by reason of this
awful word, that anyone who has lived in that great republic
which is called Paris, finds living in little towns quite
intolerable. The tyranny of public opinion (and what public
opinion !) is as stupid in the little towns of France as in the
United States of America.

CHAPTER II

A MAYOR

Importance ! What is it, sir after all ? The respect of
fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the
contempt of the wise man. Bamavt

Happily for the reputation of M. de Renal as an administrator
an immense wall of support was necessary for the public
promenade which goes along the hill, a hundred steps above
the course of the Doubs. This admirable position secures
for the promenade one of the most picturesque views in the
whole ot France. But the rain water used to make furrows
in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and
rendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which
was felt by the whole town, put M. de Renal in the happy
position of being compelled to immortalise his administration
by building a wall twenty feet high and thirty to forty yards
long.

The parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Renal three
journeys to Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one
had declared himself the mortal enemy of the promenade of
Verrieres), is now raised to a height of four feet above the
ground, and as though to defy all ministers whether past
or present, it is at present adorned with tiles of hewn
stone.

How many times have my looks plunged into the valley of
the Doubs, as I thought of the Paris balls which I had
abandoned on the previous night, and leant my breast against
the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful grey almost verged
on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five or six valleys,
at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly several
small streams. There is a view of them falling into the

6 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Doubs, after a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in
these mountains. When it beats straight down, the pensive
traveller on the terrace finds shelter under some magnificent
plane trees. They owe their rapid growth and their fine verdure
with its almost bluish shade to the new soil, which M. the
mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of support for
(in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he has
enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although
he is an Ultra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and
that is why both in his opinion and in that of M. Valenod,
the fortunate Director of the workhouse of Verrieres, this
terrace can brook comparison with that of Saint-Germain en
Laye.

I find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the
COURS DE LA FIDELITE, (this official name is to be
read in fifteen to twenty places on those immortal tiles which
earned M. de Renal an extra cross.) The grievance I find in
the Cours de la Fidelite is the barbarous manner in which the
authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped
them to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their
dwarfed, rounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants
of the vegetable garden, while they are really capable of
attaining the magnificent development of the English plane
trees. But the wish of M. the mayor is despotic, and all the
trees belonging to the municipality are ruthlessly pruned twice
a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they are probably
exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener has
become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started
appropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent
to Besancon some years ago to keep watch on the abbe
Chelan and some cures in the neighbouring districts. An
old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's Italian Army, who was
living in retirement at Verrieres, and who had been in his
time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a
Bonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the
periodical mutilation of these fine trees.

" I like the shade," answered M. de Renal, with just a tinge
of that hauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a
surgeon, who is a member of the Legion of Honour. " I like
the shade, I have my trees clipped in order to give shade, and
I cannot conceive that a tree can have any other purpose,

A MAYOR 7

provided of course it is not bringing in any profit, like the
useful walnut tree."

This is the great word which is all decisive at Verrieres.
"BRINGING IN PROFIT," this word alone sums up the
habitual trend of thought of more than three-quarters of the
inhabitants.

Bringing in profit is the consideration which decides every-
thing in this little town which you thought so pretty. The
stranger who arrives in the town is fascinated by the beauty of
the fresh deep valleys which surround it, and he imagines at
first that the inhabitants have an appreciation of the beautiful.
They talk only too frequently of the beauty of their country,
and it cannot be denied that they lay great stress on it, but
the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers, whose
money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which brings in
profit to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.

It was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Renal was taking
a promenade on the Cours de la Fidelite with his wife on his
arm. While listening to her husband (who was talking in a
somewhat solemn manner) Madame de Renal followed
anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little boys.
The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too
frequently near the parapet and looked as though he was
going to climb up it. A sweet voice then pronounced the
name of Adolphe and the child gave up his ambitious project.
Madame de Renal seemed a woman of thirty years of age but
still fairly pretty.

" He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from
Paris," said M. de Renal, with an offended air and a face
even paler than usual. " I am not without a few friends at
court ! " But though I want to talk to you about the provinces
for two hundred pages, I lack the requisite barbarity to make
you undergo all the long-windedness and circtimlocutions of a
provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the
mayor of Verrieres, was no other than the M. Appert, who
had two days previously managed to find his way not only into
the prison and workhouse of Verrieres, but also into the
hospital, which was gratuitously conducted by the mayor and
the principal proprietors of the district.

" But," said Madame de Renal timidly, " what harm can

8 THE RED AND THE BLACK

this Paris gentleman do you, since you administer the poor
fund with the utmost scrupulous honesty ?"

" He only comes to throw blame and afterwards he will get
some articles into the Liberal press."

" You never read them, my dear."

" But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all
that distracts us and prevents us from doing good.* Personally,
I shall never forgive the cure."

Historically true.

CHAPTER III

THE POOR FUND

A virtuous cure who does not intrigue is a providence
for the village. Fkury

It should be mentioned that the cure of Verrieres, an old
man of ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron
constitution and an iron character, had the right to visit the
prison, the hospital and the workhouse at any hour. It had
been at precisely six o'clock in the morning that M. Appert,
who had a Paris recommendation to the cure, had been
shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had
immediately gone on to the cure's house.

The cure Chelan became pensive as he read the letter
written to him by the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of
France, and the richest landed proprietor of the province.

" I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a
whisper, " they would not dare ! " Then he suddenly turned
to the gentleman from Paris, with eyes, which in spite of his
great age, shone with that sacred fire which betokens the
delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.

" Come with me, sir," he said, " but please do not express
any opinion of the things which we shall see, in the presence
of the jailer, and above all not in the presence of the
superintendents of the workhouse."

M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit.
He followed the venerable cure, visited the hospital and
workhouse, put a lot of questions, but in spite of somewhat
extraordinary answers, did not indulge in the slightest
expression of censure.

This visit lasted several hours ; the cure invited M. Appert
to dine, but the latter made the excuse of having some letters

io THE RED AND THE BLACK

to write ; as a matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise
his generous companion to any further extent. About three
o'clock these gentlemen went to finish their inspection of
the workhouse and then returned to the prison. There they
found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet high,
with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by
reason of his terror.

" Ah, monsieur," he said to the cure as soon as he saw him,
" is not the gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert ? "

" What does that matter ? " said the cure.

"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific
orders, and M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who
must have galloped during the whole of the night, that M.
Appert was not to be allowed in the prisons."

" I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the cure, " that the
traveller who is with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you
not admit that I have the right to enter the prison at any
hour of the day or night accompanied by anybody I choose ? "

" Yes, M. the cure," said the jailer in a low voice,
lowering his head like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging
obedience by fear of the stick, ' ' only, M. the cure, I have a
wife and children, and shall be turned out if they inform
against me. I only have my place to live on."

" I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered
the good cure, with increasing emotion in his voice.

" What a difference ! " answered the jailer keenly. " As for
you, M. le cure, we all know that you have eight hundred
francs a year, good solid money."

Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated
in twenty different ways, had been agitating for the last two
days all the odious passions of the little town of Verrieres.

At the present time they served as the text for the little
discussion which M. de Renal was having with his wife. He
had visited the cure earlier in the morning accompanied by
M Valenod, the director of the workhouse, in order to convey
their most emphatic displeasure. M. Chelan had no protector,
and felt all the weight of their words.

" Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third cure of eighty years
of age who has been turned out in this district. I have been
here for fifty-six years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants
of the town, which was only a hamlet when I came to it

THE POOR FUND n

Every day I marry young people whose grandparents I have
married in days gone by. Verrieres is my family, but I said
to myself when I saw the stranger, ' This man from Paris may
as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of
them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our
prisoners ? ' "

The reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all, those of M.
Valenod, the director of the workhouse, became more and
more animated.

" Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old cure
exclaimed in a trembling voice ; " I shall still continue to live
in the district. As you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago
a piece of land that brings in eight hundred francs a year ; I
shall live on that income. I do not save anything out of my
living, gentlemen ; and that is perhaps why, when you talk to
me about it, I am not particularly frightened."

M. de Renal always got on very well with his wife, but he
did not know what to answer when she timidly repeated the
phrase of M. le cure, " What harm can this Paris gentleman
do the prisoners ? " He was on the point of quite losing his
temper when she gave a cry. Her second son had mounted
the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,
although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty
feet above the vineyard on the other side. The fear of
frightening her son and making him fall prevented Madame
de Renal speaking to him. But at last the child, who was
smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw her pallor,
jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well
scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

" I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the
house," said M. de Renal ; " he will look after the children,
who are getting too naughty for us to manage. He is a young
priest, or as good as one, a good Latin scholar, and will make
the children get on. According to the cure, he has a steady
character. I will give him three hundred francs a year and
his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he
used to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member
of the Legion of Honour, who went to board with the Sorels,
on the pretext that he was their cousin. It is quite possible
that that man was really simply a secret agent of the Liberals.

12 THE RED AND THE BLACK

He said that the mountain air did his asthma good, but that
is something which has never been proved. He has gone
through all Buonaparte's campaigns in Italy, and had
even, it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite.
This Liberal taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a
number of books which he had brought with him. Of course,
in the ordinary way, I should have never thought of allowing
a carpenter's son to come into contact with our children, but
the cure told me, the very day before the scene which has just
estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology
for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He
is, consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good
Latin scholar.

"jThis arrangement will be convenient in more than one
way," continued M. de Renal, looking at his wife with a
diplomatic air. " That Valenod is proud enough of his two
fine Norman horses which he has just bought for his carriage,
but he hasn't a tutor for his children."

" He might take this one away from us."

"You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Renal,
thanking his wife with a smile for the excellent idea which she
had just had. " Well, that's settled."

" Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your
mind ! "

" It is because I'm a man of character, as the cure found
out right enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves ; we are
surrounded by Liberals in this place. All those cloth merchants
are jealous of me, I am certain of it ; two or three are be-
coming rich men. Well, I should rather fancy it for them to
see M. de Renal's children pass along the street as they go out
for their walk, escorted by their tutor. It will impress people.
My grandfather often used to tell us that he had a tutor when
he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but
that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary tor
keeping up our position."

This sudden resolution left Madame de Renal quite pensive.
She was a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of
the country, to use the local expression. She had a certain
air of simplicity and youthfulness in her deportment. This
naive grace, with its innocence and its vivacity, might even
have recalled to a Parisian some suggestion of the sweets he

THE POOR FUND 13

had left behind him. If she had realised this particular phase
of her success, Madame de Renal would have been quite
ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely
alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of
the workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court,
a fact which had cast a singular glamour over her virtue ; for
this M. Valenod, a big young man with a square, sturdy frame,
florid face, and big, black whiskers, was one of those coarse,
blustering, and noisy people who pass in the provinces for a
" fine man."

Madame de Renal, who had a very shy, and apparently a
very uneven temperament, was particularly shocked by M.
Valenod's lack of repose, and by his boisterous loudness. Her
aloofness from what, in the Verrieres' jargon, was called
" having a good time," had earned her the reputation of being
very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought about it,
but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of the
town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she
passed for a fool in the eyes of their good ladies because
she did not wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss
the most splendid opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris
or Besancon. Provided she was allowed to wander in her
beautiful garden, she never complained. She was a naive
soul, who had never educated herself up to the point of
judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored
her. She supposed, without actually formulating the thought,
that there was no greater sweetness in the relationship between
husband and wife than she herself had experienced. She
loved M. de Renal most when he talked about his projects for
their children. The elder he had destined for the army, the
second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum
up, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other
men of her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of
Verrieres had a reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation
for good form, on the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which
he had inherited from an uncle. Old Captain de Renal had
served, before the Revolution, in the infantry regiment of M.
the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted to the Prince's salons
when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de Montesson,
the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the

M THE RED AND THE BLACK

Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too
frequently in M. de Renal's anecdotes. He found it, however,
more and more of a strain to remember stories which required
such delicacy in the telling, and for some time past it had
only been on great occasions that he would trot out his anec-
dotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover, he
was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed,
and justly so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.

CHAPTER IV

A FATHER AND A SON

E sara mia colpa

Se cosi e ? Machiazwlli.

" My wife really has a head on her shoulders," said the mayor
of Verrieres at six o'clock the following morning, as he went
down to the saw-mill of Father Sorel. " It had never occurred
to me that if I do not take little Abbe Sorel, who, they say,
knows Latin like an angel, that restless spirit, the director of
the workhouse, might have the same idea and snatch him
away from me, though of course I told her that it had, in order
to preserve my proper superiority. And how smugly, to be
sure, would he talk about his children's tutor ! . . . . The
question is, once the tutor's mine, shall he wear the cassock ? "

M. de Renal was absorbed in this problem when he saw a
peasant in the distance, a man nearly six feet tall, who since
dawn had apparently been occupied in measuring some pieces
of wood which had been put down alongside the Doubs on
the towing-path. The peasant did not look particularly
pleased when he saw M. the Mayor approach, as these pieces
of wood obstructed the road, and had been placed there in
breach of the rules.

Father Sorel (for it was he) was very surprised, and even
more pleased at the singular offer which M. de Renal made
him for his son Julien. None the less, he listened to it with
that air of sulky discontent and apathy which the subtle in-
habitants of these mountains know so well how to assume.
Slaves as they have been since the time of the Spanish
Conquest, they still preserve this feature, which is also found
in the character of the Egyptian fellah.

Sorel's answer was at first simply a long-winded recitation

16 THE RED AND THE BLACK

of all the formulas of respect which he knew by heart. While
he was repeating these empty words with an uneasy smile,
which accentuated all the natural disingenuousness, if not,
indeed, knavishness of his physiognomy, the active mind of
the old peasant tried to discover what reason could induce so
so important a man to take into his house his good-for-
nothing of a son. He was very dissatisfied with Julien, and it
was for Julien that M. de Renal offered the undreamt-of
salary of 30ofcs. a year, with board and even clothing. This
latter claim, which Father Sorel had had the genius to spring
upon the mayor, had been granted with equal suddenness by
M. de Renal.

This demand made an impression on the mayor. It is
clear, he said to himself, that since Sorel is not beside himself
with delight over my proposal, as in the ordinary way he ought
to be, he must have had offers made to him elsewhere, and
whom could they have come from, if not from Valenod. It was
in vain that M. de Renal pressed Sorel to clinch the matter
then and there. The old peasant, astute man that he was,
stubbornly refused to do so. He wanted, he said, to consult
his son, as if in the provinces, forsooth, a rich father consulted a
penniless son for any other reason than as a mere matter of form.

A water saw-mill consists of a shed by the side of a stream.
The roof is supported by a framework resting on four large
timber pillars. A saw can be seen going up and down at a
height of eight to ten feet in the middle of the shed, while a
piece of wood is propelled against this saw by a very simple
mechanism. It is a wheel whose motive-power is supplied
by the stream, which sets in motion this double piece of
mechanism, the mechanism of the saw which goes up and
down, and the mechanism which gently pushes the piece of
wood towards the saw, which cuts it up into planks.

Approaching his workshop, Father Sorel called Julien in
his stentorian voice ; nobody answered. He only saw his
giant elder sons, who, armed with heavy axes, were cutting up
the pine planks which they had to carry to the saw. They
were engrossed in following exactly the black mark traced
on each piece of wood, from which every blow of their axes
threw off enormous shavings. They did not hear their father's
voice. The latter made his way towards the shed. He
entered it and looked in vain for Julien in the place where he

A FATHER AND A SON 17

ought to have been by the side of the saw. He saw him five
or six feet higher up, sitting astride one of the rafters of the
roof. Instead of watching attentively the action of the
machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was more anti-
pathetic to old Sorel. He might possibly have forgiven Julien
his puny physique, ill adapted as it was to manual labour, and
different as it was from that of his elder brothers; but he
hated this reading mania. He could not read himself.

It was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. It
was the young man's concentration on his book, rather than
the din made by the saw, which prevented him from hearing
his father's terrible voice. At last the latter, in spite of his
age, jumped nimbly on to the tree that was undergoing the
action of the saw, and from there on to the cross-bar that
supported the roof. A violent blow made the book which
Julien held, go flying into the stream ; a second blow on the
head, equally violent, which took the form of a box on the ears,
made him lose his balance. He was on the point of falling
twelve or fifteen feet lower down into the middle of the levers
of the running machinery which would have cut him to pieces,
but his father caught him as he fell, in his left hand.

" So that's it, is it, lazy bones ! always going to read your
damned books are you, when you're keeping watch on the
saw ? You read them in the evening if you want to, when
you go to play the fool at the cure's, that's the proper time."

Although stunned by the force of the blow and bleeding
profusely, Julien went back to his official post by the side of
the saw. He had tears in his eyes, less by reason of the
physical pain than on account of the loss of his beloved book.

"Get down, you beast, when I am talking to you," the
noise of the machinery prevented Julien from hearing this
order. His father, who had gone down did not wish to give
himself the trouble of climbing up on to the machinery again,
and went to fetch a long fork used for bringing down nuts,
with which he struck him on the shoulder. Julien had scarcely
reached the ground, when old Sorel chased him roughly
in front of him and pushed him roughly towards the house.
" God knows what he is going to do with me," said the
young man to himself. As he passed, he looked sorrowfully
into the stream into which his book had fallen, it was the
one that he held dearest of all, the Memorial of St. Helena.

2

i8 THE RED AND THE BLACK

He had purple cheeks and downcast eyes. He was a young
man of eighteen to nineteen years old, and of puny appearance,
with irregular but delicate features, and an aquiline nose. The
big black eyes which betokened in their tranquil moments a
temperament at once fiery and reflective were at the present
moment animated by an expression of the most ferocious hate.
Dark chestnut hair, which came low down over his brow,
made his forehead appear small and gave him a sinister look
during his angry moods. It is doubtful if any face out of
all the innumerable varieties of the human physiognomy was
ever distinguished by a more arresting individuality.

A supple well-knit figure, indicated agility rather than
strength. His air of extreme pensiveness and his great pallor
had given his father the idea that he would not live, or that
if he did, it would only be to be a burden to his family. The
butt of the whole house, he hated his brothers and his father.
He was regularly beaten in the Sunday sports in the public
square.

A little less than a year ago his pretty face had begun
to win him some sympathy among the young girls. Univer-
sally despised as a weakling, Julien had adored that old
Surgeon-Major, who had one day dared to talk to the mayor
on the subject of the plane trees.

This Surgeon had sometimes paid Father Sorel for taking
his son for a day, and had taught him Latin and History, that
is to say the 1796 Campaign in Italy which was all the
history he knew. When he died, he had bequeathed his
Cross of the Legion of Honour, his arrears of half pay, and
thirty or forty volumes, of which the most precious had just
fallen into the public stream, which had been diverted owing
to the influence of M. the Mayor.

Scarcely had he entered the house, when Julien felt his
shoulder gripped by his father's powerful hand ; he trembled,
expecting some blows.

" Answer me without lying," cried the harsh voice of the
old peasant in his ears, while his hand turned him round and
round, like a child's hand turns round a lead soldier. The big
black eyes of Julien filled with tears, and were confronted by
the small grey eyes of the old carpenter, who looked as if he
meant to read to the very bottom of his soul.

CHAPTER V

A NEGOTIATION

Cunctando restituit rem. Ennius.

" Answer me without lies, if you can, you damned dog, how
did you get to know Madame de Renal ? When did you speak
to her?"

" I have never spoken to her," answered Julien, " I have
only seen that lady in church."

" You must have looked at her, you impudent rascal."

" Not once ! you know, I only see God in church," answered
Julien, with a little hypocritical air, well suited, so he thought,
to keep off the parental claws.

" None the less there's something that does not meet the
eye," answered the cunning peasant. He was then silent for a
moment. " But I shall never get anything out of you, you
damned hypocrite," he went on. " As a matter of fact, I am
going to get rid of you, and my saw-mill will go all the better
for it. You have nobbled the curate, or somebody else, who
has got you a good place. Run along and pack your traps,
and I will take you to M. de Renal's, where you are going to
be tutor to his children."

" What shall I get for that ? "

' Board, clothing, and three hundred francs salary."

" I do not want to be a servant."

" Who's talking of being a servant, you brute, Do you think
I want my son to be a servant ? "

" But with whom shall I have my meals ? "

This question discomforted old Sorel, who felt he might
possibly commit some imprudence if he went on talking. He
burst out against Julien, flung insult after insult at him,

zo THE RED AND THE BLACK

accused him of gluttony, and left him to go and consult his
other sons.

Julien saw them afterwards, each one leaning on his axe
and holding counsel. Having looked at them for a long time,
Julien saw that he could find out nothing, and went and
stationed himself on the other side of the saw in order to
avoid being surprised. He wanted to think over this un-
expected piece of news, which changed his whole life, but he
felt himself unable to consider the matter prudently, his
imagination being concentrated in wondering what he would
see in M. de Renal's fine mansion.

" I must give all that up," he said to himself, " rather than
let myself be reduced to eating with the servants. My father
would like to force me to it. I would rather die. I have fifteen
francs and eight sous of savings. I will run away to-night ;
I will go across country by paths where there are no gendarmes
to be feared, and in two days I shall be at Besancon. I will
enlist as a soldier there, and, if necessary, I will cross into
Switerzerland. But in that case, no more advancement, it
will be all up with my being a priest, that fine career which
may lead to anything."

This abhorrence of eating with the servants was not really
natural to Julien ; he would have done things quite, if not
more, disagreeable in order to get on. He derived this
repugnance from the Confessions of Rousseau. It was the
only book by whose help his imagination endeavoured to con-
struct the world. The collection of the Bulletins of the Grand
Army, and the Memorial of St. Helena completed his Koran.
He would have died for these three works. He never believed
in any rther. To use a phrase of the old Surgeon-Major, he
regarded all the other books in the world as packs of lies,
written by rogues in order to get on.

Julien possessed both a fiery soul and one of those astonish-
ing memories which are so often combined with stupidity.

In order to win over the old cure Chelan, on whose
good grace he realized that his future prospects depended, he
had learnt by heart the New Testament in Latin. He also
knew M. de Maistre's book on The Pope, and believed in one
as little as he did in the other.

Sorel and his son avoided talking to each other to-day
as though by mutual consent. In the evening Julien went to

A NEGOTIATION 21

take his theology lesson at the cure's, but he did not consider
that it was prudent to say anything to him about the strange
proposal which had been made to his father. " It is possibly
a trap," he said to himself, " I must pretend that I have
forgotten all about it."

Early next morning, M. de Renal had old Sorel summoned
to him. He eventually arrived, after keeping M. de Renal
waiting for an hour-and-a-half, and made, as he entered the
room, a hundred apologies interspersed with as many bows.
After having run the gauntlet of all kinds of objections, Sorel
was given to understand that his son would have his meals
with the master and mistress of the house, and that he would
eat alone in a room with the children on the days when they
had company. The more clearly Sorel realized the genuine
eagerness of M. the Mayor, the more difficulties he felt inclined
to raise. Being moreover full of mistrust and astonishment,
he asked to see the room where his son would sleep. It was
a big room, quite decently furnished, into which the servants
were already engaged in carrying the beds of the three
children.

This circumstance explained a lot to the old peasant. He
asked immediately, with quite an air of assurance, to see the
suit which would be given to his son. M. de Renal opened
his desk and took out one hundred francs.

"Your son will go to M. Durand, the draper, with this
money and will get a complete black suit."

" And even supposing I take him away from you," said the
peasant, who had suddenly forgotten all his respectful for-
malities, " will he still keep this black suit ? "

" Certainly ! "

" Well," said Sorel, in a drawling voice, " all that remains to
do is to agree on just one thing, the money which you will give
him."

" What ! " exclaimed M. de Renal, indignantly, " we agreed
on that yesterday. I shall give him three hundred francs, I
think that is a lot, and probably too much."

"That is your offer and I do not deny it," said old Sorel,
speaking still very slowly; and by a stroke of genius which
will only astonish those who do not know the Franche-Comte
peasants, he fixed his eyes on M. de Renal and added,
" We shall get better terms elsewhere."

22 THE RED AND THE BLACK

The Mayor's face exhibited the utmost consternation at
these words. He pulled himself together however and after
a cunning conversation of two hours' length, where every single
word on both sides was carefully weighed, the subtlety of the
peasant scored a victory over the subtlety of the rich man,
whose livelihood was not so dependent on his faculty of
cunning. All the numerous stipulations which were to
regulate Julien's new existence were duly formulated. Not
only was his salary fixed at four hundred francs, but they were
to be paid in advance on the first of each month.

" Very well, I will give him thirty-five francs," said M. de
Renal.

" I am quite sure," said the peasant, in a fawning voice,
" that a rich, generous man like the M. mayor would go as far as
thirty-six francs, to make up a good round sum."

" Agreed ! " said M. de Renal, " but let this be final." For
the moment his temper gave him a tone of genuine firm-
ness. The peasant saw that it would not do to go any
further.

Then, on his side, M. de Renal managed to score. He
absolutely refused to give old Sorel, who was very anxious to
receive it on behalf of his son, the thirty-six francs for the first
month. It had occurred to M. de Renal that he would have
to tell his wife the figure which he had cut throughout these
negotiations.

" Hand me back the hundred francs which I gave you," he
said sharply. " M. Durand owes me something, I will go
with your son to see about a black cloth suit."

After this manifestation of firmness, Sorel had the prudence
to return to his respectful formulas ; they took a good quarter
of an hour. Finally, seeing that there was nothing more to be
gained, he took his leave. He finished his last bow with
these words :

" I will send my son to the Chateau." The Mayor's officials
called his house by this designation when they wanted to
humour him.

When he got back to his workshop, it was in vain that Sorel
sought his son. Suspicious of what might happen, Julien had
gone out in the middle of the night. He wished to place his
Cross of the Legion of Honour and his books in a place of
safety. He had taken everything to a young wood-merchant

A NEGOTIATION 23

named Fouque, who was a friend of his, and who lived in the
high mountain which commands Verrieres.

" God knows, you damned lazy bones," said his father to
him when he re-appeared, "if you will ever be sufficiently
honourable to pay me back the price of your board which I
have been advancing to you for so many years. Take your
rags and clear out to M. the Mayor's."

Julien was astonished at not being beaten and hastened to
leave. He had scarcely got out of sight of his terrible father
when he slackened his pace. He considered that it would
assist the role played by his hyprocrisy to go and say a prayer
in the church.

The word hypocrisy surprises you ? The soul of the peasant
had had to go through a great deal before arriving at this
horrible word.

Julien had seen in the days of his early childhood certain
Dragoons of the 6th * with long white cloaks and hats covered
with long black plumed helmets who were returning from
Italy, and tied up their horses to the grilled window of his
father's house. The sight had made him mad on the military
profession. Later on he had listened with ecstasy to the
narrations of the battles of Lodi, Areola and Rivoli with which
the old surgeon-major had regaled him. He observed the
ardent gaze which the old man used to direct towards his
cross.

But when Julien was fourteen years of age they commenced
to build a church at Verrieres which, in view of the smallness
of the town, has some claim to be called magnificent. There
were four marble columns in particular, the sight of which
impressed Julien. They became celebrated in the district
owing to the mortal hate which they raised between the Justice
of the Peace and the young vicar who had been sent from
Besancon and who passed for a spy of the congregation. The
Justice of the Peace was on the point of losing his place, so
said the public opinion at any rate. Had he not dared to have
a difference with the priest who went every fortnight to Besan-
con ; where he saw, so they said, my Lord the Bishop.

In the meanwhile the Justice of the Peace, who was the

* The author v/as sub-lieutenant in the 6th Dragoons in 1800

24 THE RED AND THE BLACK

father of a numerous family, gave several sentences which
seemed unjust : all these sentences were inflicted on those of
the inhabitants who read the " Constitutionel." The right
party triumphed. It is true it was only a question of sums of
three or five francs, but one of these little fines had to be paid
by a nail-maker, who was god-father to Julien. This man
exclaimed in his anger " What a change ! and to think that
for more than twenty years the Justice of the Peace has passed
for an honest man."

The Surgeon-Major, Julien's friend, died. Suddenly Julien
left off talking about Napoleon. He announced his intention
of becoming a priest, and was always to be seen in his father's
workshop occupied in learning by heart the Latin Bible which
the cure had lent him. The good old man was astonished
at his progress, and passed whole evenings in teaching him
theology. In his society Julien did not manifest other than
pious sentiments. Who could not possibly guess that beneath
this girlish face, so pale and so sweet, lurked the unbreakable
resolution to risk a thousand deaths rather than fail to make
his fortune. Making his fortune primarily meant to Julien
getting out of Verrieres : he abhorred his native country ;
everything that he saw there froze his imagination.

He had had moments of exultation since his earliest child-
hood. He would then dream with gusto of being presented
one day to the pretty women of Paris. He would manage to
attract their attention by some dazzling feat : why should he
not be loved by one of them just as Buonaparte, when still
poor, had been loved by the brilliant Madame de Beauharnais.
For many years past Julien had scarcely passed a single year
of his life without reminding himself that Buonaparte, the
obscure and penniless lieutenant, had made himself master of
the whole world by the power of his sword. This idea
consoled him for his misfortune, which he considered to be
great, and rendered such joyful moments as he had doubly
intense.

The building of the church and the sentences pronounced
by the Justice of the Peace suddenly enlightened him. An
idea came to him which made him almost mad for some weeks,
and finally took complete possession of him with all the magic
that a first idea possesses for a passionate soul which believes
that it is original.

A NEGOTIATION 25

" At the time when Buonaparte got himself talked about,
France was frightened of being invaded ; military distinction
was necessary and fashionable. Nowadays, one sees priests
of forty with salaries of 100,000 francs, that is to say, three
times as much as Napoleon's famous generals of a division.
They need persons to assist them. Look at that Justice of
the Peace, such a good sort and such an honest man up to the
present and so old too ; he sacrifices his honour through the
fear of incurring the displeasure of a young vicar of thirty. I
must be a priest."

On one occasion, in the middle of his new-found piety (he
had already been studying theology for two years), he was
betrayed by a sudden burst of fire which consumed his soul.
It was at M. Chelan's. The good cure had invited him to
a dinner of priests, and he actually let himself praise Napoleon
with enthusiasm. He bound his right arm over his breast,
pretending that he had dislocated it in moving a trunk of a
pine-tree and carried it for two months in that painful position.
After this painful penance, he forgave himself. This is the
young man of eighteen with a puny physique, and scarcely
looking more than seventeen at the outside, who entered the
magnificent church of Verrieres carrying a little parcel under
his arm.

He found it gloomy and deserted. All the transepts in the
building had been covered with crimson cloth in celebration
of a feast. The result was that the sun's rays produced an
effect of dazzling light of the most impressive and religious
character. Julien shuddered. Finding himself alone in the
church, he established himself in the pew which had the most
magnificent appearance. It bore the arms of M. de Renal.

Julien noticed a piece of printed paper spread out on the
stool, which was apparently intended to be read, he cast his
eyes over it and saw : " Details of the execution and the
last moments of Louis Jenrel, executed at Besan^on the . . ."
The paper was torn. The two first words of a line were
legible on the back, they were, " The First Step."

" Who could have put this paper there ? " said Julien.
" Poor fellow ! " he added with a sigh, " the last syllable of his
name is the same as mine," and he crumpled up the paper.
As he left, Julien thought he saw blood near the Host, it was
holy water which the priests had been sprinkling on it, the re-

26 THE RED AND THE BLACK

flection of the red curtains which covered the windows made it
look like blood.

Finally, Julien felt ashamed of his secret terror. " Am I
going to play the coward," he said to himself: " To Arms!"
This phrase, repeated so often in the old Surgeon-Major's
battle stories, symbolized heroism to Julien. He got up
rapidly and walked to M. de Renal's house. As soon as he
saw it twenty yards in front of him he was seized, in spite of
his fine resolution, with an overwhelming timidity. The iron
grill was open. He thought it was magnificent. He had to go
inside.

Julien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by
his arrival in the house. The extreme timidity of Madame
de Renal was fluttered when she thought of this stranger
whose functions would necessitate his coming between her and
her children. She was accustomed to seeing her sons sleep
in her own room. She had shed many tears that morning,
when she had seen their beds carried into the apartment
intended for the tutor. It was in vain that she asked her
husband to have the bed of Stanislas-Xavier, the youngest,
carried back into her room.

Womanly delicacy was carried in Madame de Renal to the
point of excess. She conjured up in her imagination the
most disagreeable personage, who was coarse, badly groomed
and encharged with the duty of scolding her children simply
because he happened to know Latin, and only too ready to
flog her sons for their ignorance of that barbarous language.

CHAPTER VI

ENNUI

Non so piu cosa son

Cosa facio. Mozakt {Figaro).

Madame de Renal was going out of the salon by the folding
window which opened on to the garden with that vivacity and
grace which was natural to her when she was free from human
observation, when she noticed a young peasant near the
entrance gate. He was still almost a child, extremely pale,
and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a white
shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze.

The little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes
were so soft, that Madame de Renal's somewhat romantic
spirit thought at first that it might be a young girl in disguise,
who had come to ask some favour of the M. the Mayor. She
took pity on this poor creature, who had stopped at the entrance
of the door, and who apparently did not dare to raise its hand
to the bell. Madame de Renal approached, forgetting for the
moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival.
Julien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her
advance. He trembled when a soft voice said quite close to
his ear :

" What do you want here, my child."

Julien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame
de Renal's look, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a
certain point he forgot to be nervous. Overcome by her
beauty he soon forgot everything, even what he had come for.
Madame de Renal repeated her question.

" I have come here to be tutor, Madame," he said at last,
quite ashamed of his tears which he was drying as best as he
could

28 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Madame de Renal remained silent. They had a view or
each other at close range. Julien had never seen a human
being so well-dressed, and above all he had never seen a
woman with so dazzling a complexion speak to him at all
softly. Madame de Renal observed the big tears which had
lingered on the cheeks of the young peasant, those cheeks
which had been so pale and were now so pink. Soon she
began to laugh with all the mad gaiety of a young girl, she
made fun of herself, and was unable to realise the extent of her
happiness. So this was that tutor whom she had imagined
a dirty, badly dressed priest, who was coming to scold and
flog her children.

" What ! Monsieur^" she said to him at last, " you know
Latin ? "

The word " Monsieur " astonished Julien so much that he
reflected for a moment.

" Yes, Madame," he said timidly.

Madame de Renal was so happy that she plucked up the
courage to say to Julien, " You will not scold the poor children
too much?"

"I scold them!" said Julien in astonishment; "why
should I?"

"You won't, will you, Monsieur," she added after a little
silence, in a soft voice whose emotion became more and more
intense. " You will be nice to them, you promise me ? "

To hear himself called "Monsieur" again in all seriousness
by so well dressed a lady was beyond all Julien's expectations.
He had always said to himself in all the castles of Spain that he
had built in his youth, that no real lady would ever condescend
to talk to him except when he had a fine uniform. Madame
de Renal, on her side, was completely taken in by Julien's
beautiful complexion, his big black eyes, and his pretty hair,
which was more than usually curly, because he had just
plunged his head into the basin of the public fountain in order
to refresh himself. She was over-joyed to find that this sinister
tutor, whom she had feared to find so harsh and severe to her
children, had, as a matter of fact, the timid manner of a girl.
The contrast between her fears and what she now saw, proved
a great event for Madame de Renal's peaceful temperament.
Finally, she recovered from her surprise. She was astonished
to find herself at the gate of her own house talking in this way

ENNUI 29

and at such close quarters to this young and somewhat scantily
dressed man.

" Let us go in, Monsieur," she said to him with a certain
air of embarrassment.

During Madame de Renal's whole life she had never been
so deeply moved by such a sense of pure pleasure. Never
had so gracious a vision followed in the wake of her discon-
certing fears. So these pretty children of whom she took such
care were not after all to fall into the hands of a dirty grumbl-
ing priest. She had scarcely entered the vestibule when she
turned round towards Julien, who was following her trembling.
His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but
an additional charm in Madame de Renal's eyes. She could
not believe her own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that
the tutor ought to have a black suit.

" But is it true, Monsieur," she said to him, stopping once
again, and in mortal fear that she had made a mistake, so
happy had her discovery made her. " Is it true that you
know Latin ? " These words offended Julien's pride, and
dissipated the charming atmosphere which he had been
enjoying for the last quarter of an hour.

" Yes, Madame," he said, trying to assume an air of coldness,
" I know Latin as well as the cure, who has been good enough
to say sometimes that I know it even better."

Madame de Renal thought that Julien looked extremely
wicked. He had stopped two paces from her. She approached
and said to him in a whisper :

" You won't beat my children the first few days, will you,
even if they do not know their lessons ? "

The softness and almost supplication of so beautiful a lady
made Julien suddenly forget what he owed to his reputation
as a Latinist. Madame de Renal's face was close to his own.
He smelt the perfume of a woman's summer clothing, a quite
astonishing experience for a poor peasant. Julien blushed
extremely, and said with a sigh in a faltering voice :

" Fear nothing, Madame, I will obey you in everything."

It was only now, when her anxiety about her children had
been relieved once and for all, that Madame de Renal was
struck by Julien's extreme beauty. The comparative effemin-
ancy of his features and his air of extreme embarrassment did
not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman who was herself

30 THE RED AND THE BLACK

extremely timid. The male air, which is usually considered
essential to a man's beauty, would have terrified her.

" How old are you, sir, she said to Julien ? "

" Nearly nineteen."

" My elder son is eleven," went on Madame de Renal, who
had completely recovered her confidence. " He will be almost
a chum for you. You will talk sensibly to him. His father
started beating him once. The child was ill for a whole week,
and yet it was only a little tap."

What a difference between him and me, thought Julien.
Why, it was only yesterday that my father beat me. How
happy these rich people are. Madame de Renal, who had
already begun to observe the fine nuances of the workings in
the tutor's mind, took this fit of sadness for timidity and tried
to encourage him.

" What is your name, Monsieur ? " she said to him, with an
accent and a graciousness whose charm Julien appreciated
without being able to explain.

" I am called Julien Sorel, Madame. I feel nervous of
entering a strange house for the first time in my life. I have
need of your protection and I want you to make many allow-
ances for me during the first few days. I have never been to
the college, I was too poor. I have never spoken to anyone
else except my cousin who was Surgeon-Major, Member of
the Legion of Honour, and M. the cure Chelan. He will give
you a good account of me. My brothers always used to beat
me, and you must not believe them if they speak badly of me
to you. You must forgive my faults, Madame. I shall always
mean everything for the best."

Julien had regained his confidence during this long speech.
He was examining Madame de Renal. Perfect grace works
wonders when it is natural to the character, and above all,
when the person whom it adorns never thinks of trying to
affect it. Julien, who was quite a connoisseur in feminine
beauty, would have sworn at this particular moment that she
was not more than twenty. The rash idea of kissing her hand
immediately occurred to him. He soon became frightened of
his idea. A minute later he said to himself, it will be an act
of cowardice if I do not carry out an action which may be
useful to me, and lessen the contempt which this fine lady
probably has for a poor workman just taken away from the

ENNUI 31

saw-mill. Possibly Julien was a little encouraged through
having heard some young girls repeat on Sundays during the
last six months the words " pretty boy."

During this internal debate, Madame de Renal was giving
him two or three hints on the way to commence handling the
children. The strain Julien was putting on himself made
him once more very pale. He said with an air of constraint.

" I will never beat your children, Madame. I swear it before
God." In saying this, he dared to take Madame de Renal's
hand and carry it to his lips. She was astonished at this act,
and after reflecting, became shocked. As the weather was
very warm, her arm was quite bare underneath the shawl, and
Julien's movement in carrying her hand to his lips entirely
uncovered it. After a few moments she scolded herself. It
seemed to her that her anger had not been quick enough.

M. de Renal, who had heard voices, came out of his study,
and assuming the same air of paternal majesty with which he
celebrated marriages at the mayoral office, said to Julien :

" It is essential for me to have a few words with you before my
children see you." He made Julien enter a room and insisted
on his wife being present, although she wished to leave them
alone. Having closed the door M. Renal sat down.

" M. the cure has told me that you are a worthy person, and
everybody here will treat you with respect. If I am satisfied
with you I will later on help you in having a little establishment
of your own. I do not wish you to see either anything more
of your relatives or your friends. Their tone is bound to be
prejudicial to my children. Here are thirty-six francs for the
first month, but I insist on your word not to give a sou of this
money to your father."

M. de Renal was piqued against the old man for having
proved the shrewder bargainer.

" Now, Monsieur, for 1 have given orders for everybody
here to call you Monsieur, and you will appreciate the advantage
of having entered the house of real gentle folk, now, Mon-
sieur, it is not becoming for the children to see you in a
jacket." " Have the servants seen him ? " said M. de Renal
to his wife.

" No, my dear," she answered, with an air of deep
pensiveness.

" All the better. Put this on," he said to the surprised

32 THE RED AND THE BLACK

young man, giving him a frock-coat of his own. " Let us now
go to M. Durand's the draper."

When M. de Renal came back with the new tutor in his
black suit more than an hour later, he found his wife still
seated in the same place. She felt calmed by Julien's
presence. When she examined him she forgot to be frightened
of him. Julien was not thinking about her at all. In spite
of all his distrust of destiny and mankind, his soul at this
moment was as simple as that of a child. It seemed as
though he had lived through years since the moment, three
hours ago, when he had been all atremble in the church.
He noticed Madame de Renal's frigid manner and realised
that she was very angry, because he had dared to kiss her
hand. But the proud consciousness which was given to him
by the feel of clothes so different from those which he usually
wore, transported him so violently and he had so great a
desire to conceal his exultation, that all his movements were
marked by a certain spasmodic irresponsibility. Madame de
Renal looked at him with astonishment.

" Monsieur," said M. de Renal to him, " dignity above all
is necessary if you wish to be respected by my children."

" Sir," answered Julien, " I feel awkward in my new clothes.
I am a poor peasant and have never wore anything but jackets.
If you allow it, I will retire to my room."

" What do you think of this ' acquisition ? ' " said M. de
Renal to his wife.

Madame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband,
obeying an almost instinctive impulse which she certainly
did not own to herself.

" I am not as fascinated as you are by this little peasant.
Your favours will result in his not being able to keep his place,
and you will have to send him back before the month is out."

" Oh, well ! we'll send him back then, he cannot run me
into more than a hundred francs, and Verrieres will have got
used to seeing M. de Renal's children with a tutor. That
result would not have been achieved if I had allowed
Julien to wear a workman's clothes. If I do send him
back, I shall of course keep the complete black suit which
I have just ordered at the draper's. All he will keep is
the ready-made suit which I have just put him into at the
the tailor's."

ENNUI 33

The hour that Julien spent in his room seemed only a
minute to Madame de Renal. The children who had been
told about their new tutor began to overwhelm their mother
with questions. Eventually Julien appeared. He was quite
another man. It would be incorrect to say that he was grave
he was the very incarnation of gravity. He was introduced
to the children and spoke to them in a manner that astonished
M. de Renal himself.

" I am here, gentlemen, he said, as he finished his speech, to
teach you Latin. You know what it means to recite a lesson.
Here is the Holy Bible, he said, showing them a small volume
in thirty-two mo., bound in black. It deals especially with the
history of our Lord Jesus Christ and is the part which is called
the New Testament. I shall often make you recite your
lesson, but do you make me now recite mine."

Adolphe, the eldest of the children, had taken up the book.
" Open it anywhere you like," went on Julien and tell me the
first word of any verse, " I will then recite by heart that sacred
book which governs our conduct towards the whole world,
until you stop me."

Adolphe opened the book and read a word, and Julien
recited the whole of the page as easily as though he had
been talking French. M. de Renal looked at his wife with
an air of triumph The children, seeing the astonishment of
their parents, opened their eyes wide. A servant came to the
door of the drawing-room; Julien went on talking Latin.
The servant' first remained motionless, and then disappeared.
Soon Madame's house-maid, together with the cook, arrived
at the door. Adolphe had already opened the book at
eight different places, while Julien went on reciting all the
time with the same facility. " Great heavens! " said the cook,
a good and devout girl, quite aloud, "what a pretty little
priest ! " M. de Renal's self-esteem became uneasy. Instead
of thinking of examining the tutor, his mind was concentrated
in racking his memory for some other Latin words. Eventully
he managed to spout a phrase of Horace. Julien knew no
other Latin except his Bible. He answered with a frown.
" The holy ministry to which I destine myself has forbidden
me to read so profane a poet."

M. de Renal quoted quite a large number of alleged verses
from Horace. He explained to his children who Horace was,

3

34 THE RED AND THE BLACK

but the admiring children, scarcely attended to what he was
saying : they were looking at Julien.

The servants were still at the door. Julien thought that he
ought to prolong the test " M. Stanislas-Xavier also," he
said to the youngest of the children, " must give me a passage
from the holy book."

Little Stanislas, who was quite flattered, read indifferently
the first word of a verse, and Julien said the whole page.

To put the finishing touch on M. de Renal's triumph, M.
Valenod, the owner of the fine Norman horses, and M. Char-
cot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of the district came in when
Julien was reciting. This scene earned for Julien the title of
Monsieur ; even tht servants did not dare to refuse it to him.

That evening all Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal's to see
the prodigy. Julien answered everybody in a gloomy manner
and kept his own distance. His fame spread so rapidly in the
town that a few hours afterwards M. de Renal, fearing that he
would be taken away by somebody else, proposed to hinr that
he should sign an engagement for two years.

" No, Monsieur," Julien answered coldly, " if you wished to
dismiss me, I should have to go. An engagement which binds
me without involving you in any obligation is not an equal
one and I refuse it."

Julien played his cards so well, that in less than a month of
his arrival at the house, M. de Renal himself respected him.
As the cure had quarrelled with both M. de Renal and M.
Valenod, there was no one who could betray Julien's old
passion for Napoleon. He always spoke of Napoleon with
abhorrence.

CHAPTER VII

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

They only manage to touch the heart by wounding it. A Modern.

The children adored him, but he did not like them in the
least. His thoughts were elsewhere. But nothing which the
little brats ever did made him lose his patience. Cold, just
and impassive, and none the less liked, inasmuch his arrival
had more or less driven ennui out of the house, he was a good
tutor. As for himself, he felt nothing but hate and abhorrence
for that good society into which he had been admitted ; ad-
mitted, it is true at the bottom of the table, a circumstance
which perhaps explained his hate and his abhorrence. There
were certain ' full-dress ' dinners at which he was scarcely able
to control his hate for everything that surrounded him. One
St. Louis feast day in particular, when M. Valenod was mono-
polizing the conversation of M. de Renal, Julien was on the
point of betraying himself. He escaped into the garden on
the pretext of finding the children. " What praise of honesty,"
he exclaimed. " One would say that was the only virtue, and
yet think how they respect and grovel before a man who has
almost doubled and trebled his fortune since he has adminis-
tered the poor fund. I would bet anything that he makes a
profit even out of the monies which are intended for the
foundlings of these poor creatures whose misery is even more
sacred than that of others. Oh, Monsters ! Monsters ! And
I too, am a kind of foundling, hated as I am by my father, my
brothers, and all my family."

Some days before the feast of St. Louis, when Julien was
taking a solitary walk and reciting his breviary in the little
wood called the Belvedere, which dominates the Cours de la

36 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Fidelite, he had endeavoured in vain to> avoid his two brothers
whom he saw coming along in the distance by a lonely path.
The jealousy of these coarse workmen had been provoked to
such a pitch by their brother's fine black suit, by his air of
extreme respectability, and by the sincere contempt which he
had for them, that they had beaten him until he had fainted
and was bleeding all over.

Madame de Renal, who was taking a walk with M. de R6nal
and the sub-prefect, happened to arrive in the little wood.
She saw Julien lying on the ground and thought that he was
dead. She was so overcome that she made M. Valenod
jealous.

His alarm was premature. Julien found Madame de Renal
very pretty, but he hated her on account of her beauty, for
that had been the first danger which had almost stopped his
career.

He talked to her as little as possible, in order to make her
forget the transport which had induced him to kiss her hand
on the first day.

Madame de Renal's housemaid, Elisa, had lost no time in
falling in love with the young tutor. She often talked about
him to her mistress. Elisa's love had earned for Julien the
hatred of one of the men-servants. One day he heard the man
saying to Elisa, " You haven't a word for me now that this
dirty tutor has entered the household." The insult was un-
deserved, but Julien with the instinctive vanity ot a pretty boy
redoubled his care of his personal appearance. M. Valenod's
hate also increased. He said publicly, that it was not be-
coming for a young abbe to be such a fop.

Madame de Renal observed that Julien talked more
frequently than usual to Mademoiselle Elisa. She learnt that
the reason of these interviews was the poverty of Julien's ex-
tremely small wardrobe. He had so little linen that he was
obliged to have it very frequently washed outside the house,
and it was in these little matters that Elisa was useful to him.
Madame de Renal was touched by this extreme poverty
which she had never suspected before. She was anxious to
make him presents, but she did not dare to do so. This inner
conflict was the first painful emotion that Julien had caused
her. Till then Julien's name had been synonymous with a
pure and quite intellectual joy. Tormented by the idea of

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 37

Julien's poverty, Madame de Renal spoke to her husband
about giving him some linen for a present.

" What nonsense," he answered, " the very idea of giving
presents to a man with whom we are perfectly satisfied and
who is a good servant. It will only be if he is remiss that we
shall have to stimulate his zeal."

Madame de Renal felt humiliated by this way of looking at
things, though she would never have noticed it in the days
before Julien's arrival. She never looked at the young abbe's
attire, with its combination of simplicity and absolute cleanli-
ness, without saying to herself, " The poor boy, how can he
manage ? "

Little by little, instead of being shocked by all Julien's
deficiencies, she pitied him for them.

Madame de Renal was one of those provincial women
whom one is apt to take for fools during the first fortnight of
acquaintanceship. She had no experience of the world and
never bothered to keep up the conversation. Nature had
given her a refined and fastidious soul, while that instinct for
happiness which is innate in all human beings caused her, as
a rule, to pay no attention to the acts of the coarse persons
in whose midst chance had thrown her. If she had received
the slightest education, she would have been noticeable for
the spontaneity and vivacity of her mind, but being an heiress,
she had been brought up in a Convent of Nuns, who were
passionate devotees of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
animated by a violent hate for the French as being the
enemies of the Jesuits. Madame de Renal had had enough
sense to forget quickly all the nonsense which she had learned
at the convent, but had substituted nothing for it, and in the
long run knew nothing. The flatteries which had been
lavished on her when still a child, by reason of the great
fortune of which she was the heiress, and a decided tendency
to passionate devotion, had given her quite an inner life of
her own. In spite of her pose of perfect affability and her
elimination of her individual will which was cited as a model
example by all the husbands in Verrieres and which made M.
de Renal feel very proud, the moods of her mind were usually
dictated by a spirit of the most haughty discontent.

Many a princess who has become a bye-word for pride has
given infinitely more attention to what her courtiers have been

38 THE RED AND THE BLACK

doing around her than did this apparently gentle and demure
woman to anything which her husband either said or did. Up
to the time of Julien's arrival she had never really troubled about
anything except her children. Their little maladies, their
troubles, their little joys, occupied all the sensibility of that
soul, who, during her whole life, had adored no one but God,
when she had been at the Sacred Heart of Besancon.

A feverish attack of one of her sons would affect her almost
as deeply as if the child had died, though she would not
deign to confide in anyone. A burst of coarse" laughter, a
shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by some platitude on the
folly of women, had been the only welcome her husband had
vouchsafed to those confidences about her troubles, which
the need of unburdening herself had induced her to make
during the first years of their marriage. Jokes of this kind,
and above all, when they were directed at her children's
ailments, were exquisite torture to Madame de Renal. And
these jokes were all she found to take the place of those
exaggerated sugary flatteries with which she had been regaled
at the Jesuit Convent where she had passed her youth. Her
education had been given her by suffering. Too proud even
to talk to her friend, Madame Derville, about troubles of this
kind, she imagined that all men were like her husband, M.
Valenod, and the sub-prefect, M. Charcot de Maugiron.
Coarseness, and the most brutal callousness to everything
except financial gain, precedence, or orders, together with
blind hate of every argument to which they objected, seemed
to her as natural to the male sex as wearing boots and felt
hats.

After many years, Madame de Renal had still failed to
acclimatize herself to those monied people in whose society
she had to live.

Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found
in the sympathy of this proud and noble soul a sweet enjoy-
ment which had all the glamour and fascination of novelty.

Madame de Renal soon forgave him that extreme ignorance,
which constituted but an additional charm, and the roughness
of his manner which she succeeded in correcting. She
thought that he was worth listening to, even when the con-
versation turned on the most ordinary events, even in fact
when it was only a question of a poor dog which had been

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 39

crushed as he crossed the street by a peasant's cart going at
a trot. The sight of the dog's pain made her husband indulge
in his coarse laugh, while she noticed Julien frown, with his
fine black eyebrows which were so beautifully arched.

Little by little, it seemed to her that generosity, nobility of
soul and humanity were to be found in nobody else except
this young abbe\ She felt for him all the sympathy and even
all the admiration which those virtues excite in well-born souls.

If the scene had been Paris, Julien's position towards
Madame de Renal would have been soon simplified. But at
Paris, love is a creature of novels. The young tutor and his
timid mistress would soon have found the elucidation of their
position in three or four novels, and even in the couplets of the
Gymnase Theatre. The novels which have traced out for
them the part they would play, and showed them the model
which they were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later
have been forced by his vanity to follow that model, even
though it had given him no pleasure and had perhaps actually
gone against the grain.

If the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron
or the Pyrenees, the slightest episode would have been
rendered crucial by the fiery condition of the atmosphere. But
under our more gloomy skies, a poor young man who is only
ambitious because his natural refinement makes him feel the
necessity of some of those joys which only money can give,
can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous,
is absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her
examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything
happens gradually, in the provinces where there is far more
naturalness.

Madame de Renal was often overcome to the point of
tears when she thought of the young tutor's poverty. Julien
surprised her one day actually crying.

" Oh Madame ! has any misfortune happened to you ? "

" No, my friend," she answered, " call the children, let us
go for a walk."

She took his arm and leant on it in a manner that struck
Julien as singular. It was the first time she had called
Julien " My friend."

Towards the end of the walk, Julien noticed that she was
blushing violently. She slackened her pace.

40 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" You have no doubt heard," she said, " without looking
at him, that I am the only heiress of a very rich aunt who

lives at Besancon. She loads me with presents My

sons are getting on so wonderfully that I should like to ask
you to accept a small present as a token of my gratitude. It
is only a matter of a few louis to enable you to get some
linen. But " she added, blushing still more, and she left
off speaking

" But what, Madame ? " said Julien.

" It is unnecessary," she went on lowering her head, " to
mention this to my husband."

" I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean," answered
Julien, stopping, and drawing himself up to his full height,
with his eyes shining with rage, " and this is what you
have not realised sufficiently. I should be lower than a
menial if I were to put myself in the position of concealing
from M de. Renal anything at all having to do with my
money."

Madame de Renal was thunderstruck.

" The Mayor," went on Julien, " has given me on five
occasions sums of thirty-six francs since I have been living
in his house. I am ready to show any account-book to M.
de Renal and anyone else, even to M. Valenod who hates
me."

As the result of this outburst, Madame de Renal remained
pale and nervous, and the walk ended without either one or
the other finding any pretext for renewing the conversation.
Julien's proud heart had found it more and more impossible to
love Madame de Renal.

As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she
had been scolded by him. Under the pretext of making up
for the involuntary humiliation which she had caused him,
she indulged in acts of the most tender solicitude. The
novelty of these attentions made Madame de Renal happy for
eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent
Julien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in
the nature of a fancy for himself personally.

"That is just what rich people are," he said to himself
" they snub you and then they think they can make up for
everything by a few monkey tricks."

Madame de Renal's heart was too full, and at the same time

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 41

too innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of
her resolutions not to do so, about the offer she had
made to Julien, and the manner in which she had been
rebuffed.

" How on earth," answered M. de Renal, keenly piqued,
" could you put up with a refusal on the part of a servant,"
and, when Madame de Renal protested against the word
" Servant," " I am using, madam, the words of the late Prince
of Conde, when he presented his Chamberlains to his new
wife. ' All these people ' he said ' are servants.' I have also
read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book
which is indispensable on all questions of etiquette. ' Every
person, not a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives
a salary is your servant.' I'll go and say a few words to M.
Julien and give him a hundred francs."

" Oh, my dear," said Madame De Renal trembling, " I hope
you won't do it before the servants ! "

" Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so," said hei
husband as he took his leave, thinking of the greatness ot
the sum.

Madame de Renal fell on a chair almost fainting in her
anguish. He is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault !
She felt an abhorrence for her husband and hid her face in
her hands. She resolved that henceforth she would never
make any more confidences.

When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over.
Her chest was so cramped that she could not succeed in
pronouncing a single word. In her embarrassment she took
his hands and pressed them.

" Well, my friend," she said to him at last, " are you
satisfied with my husband ? "

" How could I be otherwise," answered Julien, with a bitter
smile, " he has given me a hundred francs."

Madame de Renal looked at him doubtfully.

" Give me your arm," she said at last, with a courageous
intonation that Julien had not heard before.

She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrieres,
in spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she
chose ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons.
But these books were those which she knew Julien was
wanting. She insisted on each child writing his name then

42 THE RED AND THE BLACK

and there in the bookseller's shop in those books which fell to
his lot. While Madame de Renal was rejoicing over the kind
reparation which she had had the courage to make to Julien,
the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity
of books which he saw at the bookseller's. He had never
dared to enter so profane a place. His heart was palpitating.
Instead of trying to guess what was passing in Madame de
Renal's heart he pondered deeply over the means by which a
young theological student could procure some of those books.
Eventually it occurred to him that it would be possible, with
tact, to persuade M. de Renal that one of the proper subjects
of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated
gentlemen who had been born in the province. After a month
of careful preparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea.
The success was so great that he actually dared to risk
mentioning to M. de Renal in conversation, a matter which
the noble mayor found disagreeable from quite another point
of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the fortune of
a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's. M.
de Renal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a
first hand acquaintance with many works which he would
hear mentioned in conversation when he went to the
Military School.

But Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no
further. He suspected some secret reason but could not
guess it.

" I was thinking, sir," he said to him one day, " that it would
be highly undesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as
a Renal to appear on a bookseller's dirty ledger." M. de
Renal's face cleared.

" It would also be a black mark," continued Julien in a
more humble tone, " against a poor theology student if it ever
leaked out that his name had been on the ledger of a book-
seller who let out books. The Liberals might go so far as to
accuse me of having asked for the most infamous books.
Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write the
titles of those perverse volumes after my name ? But Julien
was getting off the track. He noticed that the Mayor's
physiognomy was re-assuming its expression of embarrassment
and displeasure. Julien was silent. " I have caught my man "
he said to himself.

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 43

It so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the
children asked Julien, in M. de Renal's presence, about a book
which had been advertised in the Quotidienne.

" In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest
pretext for a score," said the young tutor, " and yet give me
the means of answering M. de Adolphe's question, you can
make your most menial servant take out a subscription at the
booksellers."

" That's not a bad idea," said M. de Renal, who was
obviously very delighted.

" You will have to stipulate all the same," said Julien in that
solemn and almost melancholy manner which suits some
people so well when they see the realization of matters which
they have desired for a long time past, " you will
have to stipulate that the servant should not take out any
novels. Those dangerous books, once they got into the
house, might corrupt Madame de Renal's maids, and even the
servant himself."

" You are forgetting the political pamphlets," went on M.
de Renal with an important air. He was anxious to conceal
the admiration with which the cunning " middle course "
devised by his children's tutor had filled him.

In this way Julien's life was made up of a series of little
acts of diplomacy, and their success gave him far more food
for thought than the marked manifestation of favouritism which
he could have read at any time in Madame de Renal's heart,
had he so wished.

The psychological position in which he had found himself all
his life was renewed again in the mayor of Verriere's house.
Here in the same way as at his father's saw-mill, he deeply
despised the people with whom he lived, and was hated by
them. He saw every day in the conversation of the sub-
perfect, M. Valenod and the other friends of the family, about
things which had just taken place under their very eyes, how
little ideas corresponded to reality. If an action seemed to
Julien worthy of admiration, it was precisely that very action
which would bring down upon itself the censure of the people
with whom he lived. His inner mental reply always was, "What
beasts or what fools ! " The joke was that, in spite of all his
pride, he often understood absolutely nothing what they were
talking about.

44 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Throughout his whole life he had only spoken sincerely to
the old Surgeon-Major.

The few ideas he had were about Buonaparte's Italian
Campaigns or else surgery. His youthful courage revelled in
the circumstantial details of the most terrible operations. He
said to himself.

" I should not have flinched."

The first time that Madame de Renal tried to enter into
conversation independently of the children's education, he
began to talk of surgical operations. She grew pale and
asked him to leave off. Julien knew nothing beyond
that.

So it came about that, though he passed his life in Madame
de Renal's company, the most singular silence would reign
between them as soon as they were alone.

When he was in the salon, she noticed in his eyes, in spite
of all the humbleness of his demeanour, an air of intellectual
superiority towards everyone who came to visit her. If she
found herself alone with him for a single moment, she saw
that he was palpably embarrassed. This made her feel un-
easy, for her woman's instinct caused her to realise that this
embarrassment was not inspired by any tenderness.

Owing to some mysterious idea, derived from some tale of
good society, such as the old Surgeon-Major had seen it,
Julien felt humiliated whenever the conversation languished
on any occasion when he found himself in a woman's society,
as though the particular pause were his own special fault.
This sensation was a huudred times more painful in tete-a-tete.
His imagination, full as it was of the most extravagant and
most Spanish ideas of what a man ought to say when he is
alone with a woman, only suggested to the troubled youth
things which were absolutely impossible. His soul was in the
clouds. Nevertheless he was unable to emerge from this most
humiliating silence. Consequently, during his long walks
with Madame de Renal and the children, the severity of his
manner was accentuated by the poignancy of his sufferings.
He despised himself terribly. If, by any luck, he made him-
self speak, he came out with the most absurd things. To put
the finishing touch on his misery, he saw his own absurdity
and exaggerated its extent, but what he did not see was the
expression in his eyes, which were so beautiful and betokened

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 45

so ardent a soul, that like good actors, they sometimes gave
charm to something which is really devoid of it.

Madame de Renal noticed that when he was alone with her
he never chanced to say a good thing except when he was
taken out of himself by some unexpected event, and conse-
quently forgot to try and turn a compliment. As the friends
of the house did not spoil her by regaling her with new and
brilliant ideas, she enjoyed with delight all the flashes of
Julien's intellect.

After the fall of Napoleon, every appearance of gallantry
has been severely exiled from provincial etiquette. People
are frightened of losing their jobs. All rascals look to the
religious order for support, aud hypocrisy has made firm
progress even among the Liberal classes. One's ennui is
doubled. The only pleasures left are reading and agriculture.

Madame de Renal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and
married at sixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never felt
or seen in her whole life anything that had the slightest
resemblance in the whole world to love. Her confessor,
the good cure* Chelan, had once mentioned love to her, in
discussing the advances of M. de Valenod, and had drawn so
loathsome a picture of the passion that the word now stood
to her for nothing but the most abject debauchery. She had
regarded love, such as she had come across it, in the very
small number of novels with which chance had made her
acquainted, as an exception if not indeed as something
absolutely abnormal. It was, thanks to this ignorance, that
Madame de Renal, although incessantly absorbed in Julien,
was perfectly happy, and never thought of reproaching herself
in the slightest.

CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE EPISODES

" Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,
And burning blushes, though for no transgression.'

Don Juan, c. I, st. 74.

It was only when Madame de Renal began to think of her
maid Elisa that there was some slight change in that angelic
sweetness which she owed both to her natural character and
her actual happiness, The girl had come into a fortune, went
to confess herself to the cure Chelan and confessed to him her
plan of marrying Julien. The cure* was truly rejoiced at his
friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised when
Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer
could not suit him.

" Beware, my friend, of what is passing within youfheart," said
the cure with a frown, " I congratulate you on your mission,
if that is the only reason why you despise a more than ample
fortune. It is fifty-six years since I was first cure of Verrieres,
and yet I shall be turned out, according to all appearances.
I am distressed by it, and yet my income amounts to eight
hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so that you may
not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your
career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men
who enjoy power, your eternal damnation is assured. You
may make your fortune, but you will have to do harm to the
poor, flatter the sub-prefect, the mayor, the man who enjoys
prestige, and pander to his passion; this conduct, which in
the world is called knowledge of life, is not absolutely
incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned ;
but in our career we have to make a choice ; it is a question

LITTLE EPISODES 47

of making one's fortune either in this world or the next ; there
is no middle course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come
back in three days with a definite answer. I am pained to
detect that there is at the bottom of your character a sombre
passion which is far from indicating to me that moderation
and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so necessary
for a priest ; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to tell
you," added the good cure with tears in his eyes, " I tremble
for your salvation in your career as a priest."

Julien was ashamed of his emotion ; he found himself loved
for the first time in his life ; he wept with delight ; and went to
hide his tears in the great woods behind Verrieres.

" Why am I in this position ? " he said to himself at last,
" I feel that I would give my life a hundred times over for
this good cure Chelan, and he has just proved to me that I am
nothing more than a fool. It is especially necessary for me
to deceive him, and he manages to find me out. The secret
ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my fortune.
He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when
I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him
the very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission."

" In future," continued Julien, " I will only reckon on those
elements in my character which I have tested. Who could
have told me that I should find any pleasure in shedding tears ?
How I should like some one to convince me that I am simply
a fool ! "

Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he
ought to have been prepared on the first day ; the excuse was
a piece of calumny, but what did it matter ? He confessed to
the cure, with a great deal of hesitation, that he had been
persuaded from the suggested union by a reason he could not
explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third party. This
was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chelan
found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which
was very different from that which ought to have animated a
young acolyte.

" My friend," he said to him again, " be a good country
citizen, respected and educated, rather than a priest without a
true mission."

So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new
remonstrances very well. He managed to find the words

48 THE RED AND THE BLACK

which a young and ardent seminarist would have employed,
but the tone in which he pronounced them, together with the
thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye, alarmed M.
Chelan.

You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects.
He invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent
and cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for
his tone and his gestures, he had spent his life with country
people ; he had never been given an opportunity of seeing
great models. Consequently, as soon as he was given a
chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures became
as admirable as his words.

Madame de Renal was astonished that her maid's new
fortune did not make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly
going to the cure and coming back with tears in her eyes. At
last Elisa talked to her of her marriage.

Madame de Renal thought she was ill. A kind of fever
prevented her from sleeping. She only lived when either her
maid or Julien were in sight. She was unable to think of
anything except them and the happiness which they would
find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the most
fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they
were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. J ulien could
quite well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture,
two leagues from Verrieres. In that case she would see him
sometimes. Madame de Renal sincerely believed she would
go mad. She said so to her husband and finally fell ill.
That very evening when her maid was attending her, she
noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that
moment, and started to scold her ; she then begged her
pardon. Elisa's tears redoubled. She said if her mistress
would allow her, she would tell her all her unhappiness.

" Tell me," answered Madame de Renal.

" Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must
have spoken badly about me. He believes them."

" Who refuses you ? " said Madame de Renal, scarcely
breathing.

" Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid
sobbing. " M. the cure had been unable to overcome his
resistance, for M. the cure thinks that he ought not to refuse
an honest girl on the pretext that she has been a maid. After

LITTLE EPISODS 49

all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than a carpenter,
and how did he himself earn his living before he was at
Madame's ? "

Madame de Rena stopped listening ; her excessive happiness
had almost deprived her of her reason. She made the girl
repeat several times the assurance that Julien had refused her,
with a positiveness which shut the door on the possibility of
his coming round to a more prudent decision.

" I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. " I
will speak to M. Julien."

The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Renal
indulged in the delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause,
and of seeing Elisa's hand and fortune stubbornly refused for
a whole hour.

Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers,
and finished by answering with spirit Madame de Renal's
good advice. She could not help being overcome by the
torrent of happiness which, after so many days of despair,
now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill. When she had
recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent
everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.

" Can I be in love with Julien ? " she finally said to herself.
This discovery, which at any other time would have plunged
her into remorse and the deepest agitation, now only produced
the effect of a singular, but as it were, indifferent spectacle.
Her soul was exhausted by all that she had just gone through,
and had no more sensibility to passion left.

Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep ;
when she woke up she did not frighten herself so much as
she ought to have. She was too happy to be able to see
anything wrong in anything. Naive and innocent as she
was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured her
soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility
to some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely
absorbed as she had been before Julien's arrival with that
mass of work which falls to the lot of a good mistress of a
household away from Paris, Madame de Renal thought of
passion in the same way in which we think of a lottery : a
certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.

The dinner bell rang. Madame de Renal blushed violently.
She heard the voice of Julien who was bringing in the children.

4

50 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Having grown somewhat adroit since her falling in love, she
complained of an awful headache in order to explain her
redness.

"That's just like what all women are," answered M. de
Renal with a coarse laugh. "Those machines have always
got something or other to be put right."

Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame
de Renal was shocked by the tone of voice. In order to
distract herself, she looked at Julien's physiognomy ; he
would have pleased her at this particular moment, even
if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.

M. de Renal, who always made a point of copying the
habits of the gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy
in the first fine days of the spring ; this is the village rendered
celebrated by the tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred
paces from the picturesque ruin of the old Gothic church,
M. de Renal owns an old chateau with its four towers and
a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with a great
many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees
which are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded
with apple trees, served for a promenade. Eight or ten
magnificent walnut trees were at the end of the orchard.
Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps eighty feet.

" Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Renal was in
the habit of saying, whenever his wife admired them, " costs
me the harvest of at least half an acre; corn cannot grow
under their shade."

Madame de Renal found the sight of the country novel :
her admiration reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment
by which she was animated gave her both ideas and resolution.
M. de Renal had returned to the town, for mayoral business,
two days after their arrival in Vergy. But Madame de Renal
engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien had given her
the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round the
orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible
for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours
of the morning without getting their feet wet from the dew.
This idea was put into execution within twenty-four hours of
its being conceived. Madame de Renal gaily spent the whole
day with Julien in supervising the workmen.

When the Mayor ot Verrieres came back from the town

LITTLE EPISODS 51

he was very surprised to find the avenue completed. His
arrival surprised Madame de Renal as well. She had forgotten
his existence. For two months he talked with irritation about
the boldness involved in making so important a repair without
consulting him, but Madame de Renal had had it executed
at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.

She spent her days in running about the orchard with her
children, and in catching butterflies. They had made big
hoods of clear gauze with which they caught the poor
lepidoptera. This is the barbarous name which Julien taught
Madame de Renal. For she had had M. Godart's fine work
ordered from Besancon, and Julien used to tell her about
the strange habits of the creatures.

They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a
great cardboard box which Julien had prepared.

Madame de Renal and Julien had at last a topic of
conversation ; he was no longer exposed to the awful torture
that had been occasioned by their moments of silence.

They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though
always about very innocent matters. This gay, full, active
life, pleased the fancy of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa
who found herself overworked. Madame had never taken
so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival time, when
there is a ball at Verrieres, she would say ; she changes her
gowns two or three times a day.

As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not
propose to deny that Madame de Renal, who had a superb
skin, arranged her gowns in such a way as to leave her arms
and her bosom very exposed. She was extremely well made,
and this style of dress suited her delightfully.

"You have never been so yoting, Madame," her Verrieres
friends would say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy
(this is one of the local expressions).

It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will
believe, but Madame de Renal had no specific object in
taking so much trouble. She found pleasure in it and spent
all the time which she did not pass in hunting butterflies with
the children and Julien, in working with Elisa at making
gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her
only expedition to Verrieres was caused by her desire to buy
some new summer gowns which had just come from Mulhouse.

52 THE RED AND THE BLACK

She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a
relative of hers. Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had
gradually become attached to Madame Derville, who had
once been her school mate at the Sacr Coeur.

Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called
her cousin's mad ideas : " I would never have thought of
them alone," she said. When Madame de Renal was with her
husband, she was ashamed of those sudden ideas, which, are
called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite silly : but
Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would
start to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after
the ladies had been alone for a long time, Madame de Renal's
brain became more animated, and a long morning spent
together by the two friends passed like a second, and left them
in the best of spirits. On this particular journey, however,
the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much less
merry, but much more happy than usual.

Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived
like an absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in
running after the butterflies. After so long a period of
constraint and wary diplomacy, he was at last alone and far
from human observation ; he was instinctively free from any
apprehension on the score of Madame de Renal, and
abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive, which
is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most
beautiful mountains in the world.

Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that
she was his friend ; he took the first opportunity of showing
her the view from the end of the new avenue, under the
walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is equal, if not superior,
to the most wonderful views that Switzerland and the Italian
lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which com-
mences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great
precipices fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the
river. It was to the peaked summits of these rocks that
Julien, who was now happy, free, and king of the household
into the bargain, would take the two friends, and enjoy their
admiration these sublime views.

" To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would
say.

The country around Verrieres had been spoilt for Julien

LITTLE EPISODES 53

by the jealousy of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous
and angry father. He was free from these bitter memories
at Vergy; for the first time in his life, he failed to see an
enemy. When, as frequently happened, M. de Renal was in
town, he ventured to read ; soon, instead of reading at night
time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding
his lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside dowri,
he was able to indulge in sleep ; in the day, however, in the
intervals between the children's lessons, he would come among
these rocks with that book which was the one guide of his
conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He found in it
simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his
moments of discouragement.

Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several dis-
cussions about the merits of the novels which were fashionable
in his reign, furnished him now for the first time with some
ideas which any other young man of his age would have had
for a long time.

The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending
the evenings under an immense pine tree some yards from the
house. The darkness was profound. One evening, Julien was
speaking and gesticulating, enjoying to the full the pleasure of
being at his best when talking to young women ; in one of his
gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal which
was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted
wood, which are so frequently to be seen in gardens.

The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a
point of duty to secure that that hand should not be removed
when he touched it. The idea of a duty to be performed and
the consciousness of his stultification, or rather of his social
inferiority, if he should fail in acheiving it, immediately
banished all pleasure from his heart.

CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY
M. Guerin's Dido, a charming sketch ! Strombeck.

His expression was singular when he saw Madame de Renal
the next day; he watched her like an enemy with whom he
would have to fight a duel. These looks, which were so
different from those of the previous evening, made Madame
de Renal lose her head ; she had been kind to him and he
appeared angry. She could not take her eyes off his.

Madame Derville's presence allowed Julien to devote less
time to conversation, and more time to thinking about what
he had in his mind. His one object all this day was to fortify
himself by reading the inspired book that gave strength to
his soul.

He considerably curtailed the children's lessons, and when
Madame de Renal's presence had effectually brought him back
to the pursuit of his ambition, he decided that she absolutely
must allow her hand to rest in his that evening.

The setting of the sun which brought the crucial moment
nearer and nearer made Julien's heart beat in a strange way.
Night came. He noticed with a joy, which took an immense
weight off his heart, that it was going to be very dark. The
sky, which was laden with big clouds that had been brought
along by a sultry wind, seemed to herald a storm. The two
friends went for their walk very late. All they did that night
struck Julien as strange. They were enjoying that hour which
seems to give certain refined souls an increased pleasure in
loving.

At last they sat down, Madame de Renal beside Julien, and
Madame Derville near her friend. Engrossed as he was by

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY 55

the attempt which he was going to make, Julien could think
of nothing to say. The conversation languished.

"Shall I be as nervous and miserable over my first duel? "
said Julien to himself; for he was too suspicious both of him-
self and of others, not to realise his own mental state.

In his mortal anguish, he would have preferred any danger
whatsoever. How many times did he not wish some matter
to crop up which would necessitate Madame de Renal going
into the house and leaving the garden ! The violent strain on
Julien's nerves was too great for his voice not to be considers
ably changed ; soon Madame de Renal's voice became nervoua
as well, but Julien did not notice it. The awful battle raging
between duty and timidity was too painful, for him to be in --
position to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to
ten had just struck on the chateau clock without his having
ventured anything. Julien was indignant at his own coward
ice, and said to himself, " at the exact moment when ten o'clock
strikes, I will perform what I have resolved to do all through
the day, or I will go up to my room and blow out my
brains."

After a final moment of expectation and anxiety, during
which Julien was rendered almost beside himself by his ex-
cessive emotion, ten o'clock struck from the clock over his
head. Each stroke of the fatal clock reverberated in his
bosom, and caused an almost physical pang.

Finally, when the last stroke of ten was still reverberating,
he stretched out his hand and took Madame de Renal's, who
immediately withdrew it. Julien, scarcely knowing what he
was doing, seized it again. In spite of his own excitement, he
could not help being struck by the icy coldness of the hand
which he was taking ; he pressed it convulsively ; a last effort
was made to take it away, but in the end the hand remained
in his.

His soul was inundated with happiness, not that he loved
Madame de Renal, but an awful torture had just ended. He
thought it necessary to say something, to avoid Madame
Derville noticing anything. His voice was now strong and
ringing. Madame de Renal's, on the contrary, betrayed so
much emotion that her friend thought she was ill, and sug-
gested her going in. Julien scented danger, " if Madame de
Renal goes back to the salon, I shall relapse into the awful

56 THE RED AND THE BLACK

state in which I have been all day. I have held the hand far
too short a time for it really to count as the scoring of an
actual advantage."

At the moment when Madame Derville was repeating her
suggestion to go back to the salon, Julien squeezed vigor-
ously the hand that was abandoned to him.

Madame de Renal, who had started to get up, sat down
again and said in a faint voice,

" I feel a little ill, as a matter of fact, but the open air is
doing me good."

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at the
present moment was extreme ; he spoke, he forgot to pose,
and appeared the most charming man in the world to the two
friends who were listening to him. Nevertheless, there was a
slight lack of courage in all this eloquence which had suddenly
come upon him. He was mortally afraid that Madame
Derville would get tired of the wind before the storm, which
was beginning to rise, and want to go back alone into the
salon. He would then have remained tete a-tete with Madame
de Renal. He had had, almost by accident that blind courage
which is sufficient for action ; but he felt that it was out of his
power to speak the simplest word to Madame de Renal. He
was certain that, however slight her reproaches might be, he
would nevertheless be worsted, and that the advantage he had
just won would be destroyed.

Luckily for him on this evening, his moving and emphatic
speeches found favour with Madame Derville, who very often
found him as clumsy as a child and not at all amusing. As
for Madame de Renal, with her hand in Julien's, she did not
have a thought; she simply allowed herself to go on living.
The hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by
by Charles the Bold according to the local tradition, were a
real period of happiness. She listened with delight to the
soughing of the wind in the thick foliage of the pine tree
and to the noise of some stray drops which were beginning to
fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien failed
to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have
quickly reassured him; MSsdame de Renal, who had been
obliged to take away her hand, because she had got up to help
her cousin to pick up a flower-pot which the wind had knocked
over at her feet, had scarcely sat down again before she gave

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY 57

him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as though it had
already been a pre-arranged thing between them.

Midnight had struck a long timo ago ; it was at last neces-
sary to leave the garden ; they separated. Madame de Renal
swept away as she was, by the happiness of loving, was so
completely ignorant of the world that she scarcely reproached
herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of her sleep. A
leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued by
the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all
through the day.

He was called at five o'clockon the following day and
scarcely gave Madame de Renal a single thought.

He had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too.
The conciousness of this filled him with happiness ; he locked
himself in his room, and abandoned himself with quite a new
pleasure to reading exploits of his hero.

When the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the
Bulletins of the Great Army had made him forget all his
advantages of the previous day. He said to himself flippantly,
as he went down to the salon, " I must tell that woman that I
am in love with her." Instead of those looks brimful of
pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern
visage of M. de Renal, who had arrived from Verrieres two
hours ago, and did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien's
having passed the whole morning without attending to the
children. Nothing could have been more sordid than this
self-important man when he was in a bad temper and thought
that he could safely show it.

Each harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de
Renal's heart.

As for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so
engrossed by the great events which had been passing before
his eyes for several hours, that he had some difficulty at first
in bringing his attention sufficiently down to listen to the harsh
remarks which M. de Renal was addressing to him. He said
to him at last, rather abruptly,

" I was ill."

The tone of this answer would have stung a much less
sensitive man than the mayor of Verrieres. He half thought
of answering Julien by turning him out of the house straight
away. He was only restrained by the maxim which he had

58 THE RED AND THE BLACK

prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in business
matters.

"The young fool," he said to himself shortly afterwards,
"has won a kind of reputation in my house. That man
Valenod may take him into his family, or he may quite well
marry Elisa, and in either case, he will be able to have the
laugh of me in his heart."

In spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Renal's
dissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string
of coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame
de Renal was on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast
was scarcely over, when she asked Julien to give her his arm
for a walk. She leaned on him affectionately. Julien could
only answer all that Madame de Renal said to him by
whispering.

" Thafs what rich people are like/"

M. de Renal was walking quite close to them ; his presence
increased Julien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame
de Renal was leaning on his arm in a manner which was some-
what marked. This horrified him, and he pushed her violently
away and disengaged his arm.

Luckily, M. de Renal did not see this new piece of im-
pertinence ; it was only noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend
burst into tears. M. de Renal now started to chase away by
a shower of stones a little peasant girl who had taken a private
path crossing a corner of the orchard. "Monsieur Julien,
restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all have our
moments of temper," said madame Derville rapidly.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most
supreme contempt was depicted.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have
surprised her even more if she had appreciated its real ex-
pression ; she would have read in it something like a vague
hope of the most atrocious vengeance. It is, no doubt, such
moments of humiliation which have made Robespierres.

"Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me," said
Madame Derville to her friend, in a low voice.

" He is right to be angry," she answered. " What does it
matter if he does pass a morning without speaking to the
children, after the astonishing progress .which he has made
them make. One must admit that men are very hard."

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY 59

For the first time in her life Madame de Renal experienced
a kind of desire for vengeance against her husband. The
extreme hatred of the rich by which Julien was animated was
on the point of exploding. Luckily, M. de Renal called his
gardener, and remained occupied with him in barring by
faggots of thorns the private road through the orchard. Julien
did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly consideration of
which he was the object during all the rest of the walk. M.
de Renal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made
the excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.

Walking as he did between these two women whose extreme
nervousness filled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment,
the haughty pallor and sombre, resolute air of Julien formed
a strange contrast. He despised these women and all tender
sentiments.

" What ! " he said to himself, " not even an income of five
hundred francs to finish my studies ! Ah ! how I should like
to send them packing."

And absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few
courteous words of his two friends as he deigned to take the
trouble to understand, displeased him as devoid of sense, silly,
feeble, in a word feminine.

As the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of
endeavouring to keep the conversation alive, it came about
that Madame de Renal mentioned that her husband had come
from Verrieres because he had made a bargain for the May
straw with one of his farmers. (In this district it is the May
straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).

" My husband will not rejoin us," added Madame de Renal ;
"he will occupy himself with finishing the re-stuffing of the
house mattresses with the help of the gardener and his valet.
He has put the May straw this morning in all the beds on the
first storey ; he is now at the second."

Julien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Renal in
a singular way, and soon managed somehow to take her on
one side, doubling his pace. Madame Derville allowed them
to get ahead.

"Save my life," said Julien to Madame de Renal; "only
you can do it, for you know that the valet hates me
desperately. I must confess to you, madame, that I have a
portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress of my bed."

6o THE RED AND THE BLACK

At these words Madame de Renal in her turn became pale

"Only you, Madame, are aMe at this moment to go into
my room, feel about without their noticing in the corner of
the mattress ; it is nearest the window. You will find a small,
round box of black cardboard, very glossy."

" Does it contain a portrait ? " said Madame de Renal,
scarcely able to hold herself upright.

Julien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once pro-
ceeded to exploit it.

" I have a second favour to ask you, madame. 1 entreat
you not to look at that portrait; it is my secret."

" It is a secret," repeated Madame de Renal in a faint
voice.

But though she had been brought up among people who
are proud of their fortune and appreciative of nothing except
money, love had already instilled generosity into her soul.
Truly wounded as she was, it was with an air of the most
simple devotion that Madame de Renal asked Julien the
questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.

" So " she said to him as she went away, " it is a little round
box of black cardboard, very glossy."

" Yes, Madame," answered Julien, with that hardness which
danger gives to men.

She ascended the second storey of the chateau as pale as
though she had been going to her death. Her misery was
completed by the sensation that she was on the verge of
falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien a service restored
her strength.

" I must have that box," she said to herself, as she doubled
her pace.

She heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien's very
room. Happily, they passed into the children's room. She
lifted up the mattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing
so violently that she bruised her fingers. But, though she
was very sensitive to slight pain of this kind, she was not
conscious of it now, for she felt almost simultaneously the
smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it and
disappeared.

She had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised
by her husband than the horror with which this box inspired
her came within an ace of positively making her feel ill.

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY 61

"So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the
woman whom he loves ! "

Seated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment,
Madame de Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy.
Her extreme ignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this
juncture ; her astonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized
the box without thanking her or saying a single word, and ran
into his room, where he lit a fire and immediately burnt it.
He was pale and in a state of collapse. He exaggerated the
extent of the danger which he had undergone.

" Finding Napoleon's portrait," he said to himself, " in the
possession of a man who professes so great a hate for the
usurper ! Found, too, by M. de Renal, who is so great an
ultra, and is now in a state of irritation, and, to complete my
imprudence, lines written in my own handwriting on the
white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too, which can
leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And
each of these transports of love is dated. There was one the
day before yesterday."

" All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment,"
said Julien to himself as he watched the box burn, "and my
reputation is my only asset. It is all I have to live by and
what a life to, by heaven ! "

An hour afterwards, this fatigue, togother with the pity
which he felt for himself made him inclined to be more
tender. He met Madame de Renal and took her hand,
which he kissed with more sincerity than he had ever done
before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously
rebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride
which had been so recently wounded made him act foolishly
at this juncture. He saw in Madame de Renal nothing but
a rich woman, he disdainfully let her hand fall and went away.
He went and walked about meditatively in the garden. Soon
a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

" Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is
master of his own time. I am not bothering about the
children ! I am exposing myself to M. de Renal's humiliating
remarks, and he will be quite right." He ran to the children's
room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved
very much, somewhat calmed his agony.

" He does not despise me yet," thought Julien. But he soon

6z THE RED AND THE BLACK

reproached himself for this alleviation of his agony as though
it were a new weakness. The children caress me just in the
same way in which they would caress the young hunting-
hound which was bought yesterday.

CHAPTER X

A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE

But passion most disembles, yet betrays,
Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky
Foretells the heaviest tempest.

Don Juan, c. 4, st. 75.

M. de Renal was going through all the rooms in the chteau,
and he came back into the children's room with the servants
who were bringing back the stuffings of the mattresses. The
sudden entry of this man had the effect on Julien of the drop
of water which makes the pot overflow.

Looking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed
towards him. M. de Renal stopped and looked at his
servants.

" Monsieur," said Julien to him, " Do you think your
children would have made the progress they have made with
me with any other tutor? If you answer 'No,'" continued
Julien so quickly that M. de Renal did not have time to
speak, " how dare you reproach me with neglecting them ? "

M. de Renal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright,
concluded from the strange tone he saw this little peasant
assume, that he had some advantageous offer in his pocket,
and that he was going to leave him.

The more he spoke the more Julien's anger increased, " I
can live without you, Monsieur," he added.

" I am really sorry to see you so upset," answered M. de
Renal shuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off
engaged in making the beds.

"That is not what I mean, Monsieur," replied Julien
quite beside himself. " Think of the infamous words that you
have addressed to me, and before women too."

64 THE RED AND THE BLACK

M. de Renal understood only too well what Julien was
asking, and a painful conflict tore his soul. It happened
that Julien, who was really mad with rage, cried out,

" I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house."

At these words M. de Renal saw Julien installed with
M. Valenod. " Well, sir," he said at last with a sigh, just as
though he had called in a surgeon to perform the most
painful operation, " I accede to your request. I will give you
fifty francs a month. Starting from the day after to-morrow
which is the first of the month."

Julien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All
his anger had vanished.

" I do not despise the brute enough," he said to himself.
" I have no doubt that that is the greatest apology that so
base a soul can make."

" The children who has listened to this scene with gaping
mouths, ran into the garden to tell their mother that M.
Julien was very angry, but that he was going to have fifty
francs a month."

Julien followed them as a matter of habit without even
looking at M. de Renal whom he left in a considerable state
of irritation.

" That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs," said the
mayor to himself, "that M. Valenod has cost me. I must
absolutely speak a few strong words to him about his contract
to provide for the foundlings."

A minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de
Renal.

" I want to speak to M. Chelan on a matter of conscience.
I have the honour to inform you that I shall be absent some
hours."

" Why, my dear Julien," said M. de Renal smiling with the
falsest expression possible, " take the whole day, and to-morrow
too if you like, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to
go to Verrieres."

" He is on the very point," said M. de Renal to himself,
"of giving an answer to Valenod. He has promised me
tothing, but I must let this hot-headed young man have time
ocool down."

Julien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest,
through which one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrieres.

A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE 65

He did not wish to arrive at M. Chelan's at once. Far from
wishing to cramp himself in a new pose of hypocrisy he
needed to see clear in his own soul, and to give audience to
the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him.

" I have won a battle," he said to himself, as soon as he
saw that he was well in the forest, and far from all human
gaze. " So I have won a battle."

This expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and
restored him to some serenity.

" Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de
Renal must be precious afraid, but what of ? "

This meditation about what could have put fear into the
heart of that happy, powerful man against whom he had been
boiling with rage only an hour back, completed the restoration
to serenity of Julien's soul. He was almost able to enjoy for
a moment the delightful beauty of the woods amidst which he
was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had fallen
down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain
side. Great cedars towered almost as high as these rocks
whose shade caused a delicious freshness within three yards
of places where the heat of the sun's rays would have made it
impossible to rest.

Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these
great rocks, and then he began again to climb. Traversing a
narrow path that was scarcely marked, and was only used by
the goat herds, he soon found himself standing upon an
immense rock with the complete certainty of being far away
from all mankind. This physical position made him smile.
It symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in
the moral sphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains
filled his soul with serenity and even with joy. The mayor of
Verrieres still continued to typify in his eyes all the wealth
and all the arrogance of the earth; but Julien felt that the
hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing personal about
it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested. If he
had left off seeing M. de Renal he would in eight days have
forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his
family. " I forced him, I don't know how, to make the
greatest sacrifice. What ? more than fifty crowns a year, and
only a minute before I managed to extricate myself from the
greatest danger ; so there are two victories in one day. The

5

66 THE RED AND THE BLACK

second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why and
the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for
to morrow."

Standing up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky
which was all afire with an August sun. The grasshoppers
sang in the field about the rock ; when they held their peace
there was universal silence around him. He saw twenty
leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from time to time
some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over his
head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien's
eye followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil
powerful movements struck him. He envied that strength,
that isolation.

" Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his ? "

CHAPTER XI

AN EVENING

Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,
And tremulously gently her small hand
Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland,
And slight, so very slight that to the mind,
'Twas but a doubt.

Don Juan, c. I. st, 71.

It was necessary, however, to put in an appearance at
Verrieres. As Juiien left the cure house he was fortunate
enough to meet M. Valenod, whom he hastened to tell of the
increase in his salary.

On returning to Vergy, Juiien waited till night had fallen
before going down into the garden. His soul was fatigued by
the great number of violent emotions which had agitated him
during the day. " What shall I say to them ? " he reflected
anxiously, as he thought about the ladies. He was far from
realising that his soul was just in a mood to discuss those
trivial circumstances which usually monopolise all feminine
interests. Juiien was often unintelligible to Madame Derville,
and even to her friend, and he in his turn only half understood
all that they said to him. Such was the effect of the force
and, if I may venture to use such language, the greatness of
the transports of passion which overwhelmed the soul of this
ambitious youth. In this singular being it was storm nearly
every day.

As he entered the garden this evening, Juiien was inclined
to take an interest in what the pretty cousins were thinking.
They were waiting for him impatiently. He took his ac-
customed seat next to Madame de Renal. The darkness soon
became profound. He attempted to take hold of a white

68 THE RED AND THE BLACK

hand which he had seen some time near him, as it leant on
the back of a chair. Some hesitation was shewn, but
eventually the hand was withdrawn in a manner which
indicated displeasure. Julien was inclined to give up the
attempt as a bad job, and to continue his conversation quite
gaily, when he heard M. de Renal approaching.

The coarse words he had uttered in the morning were still
ringing in Julien's ears. " Would not taking possession of his
wife's hand in his very presence," he said to himself, " be a
good way of scoring off that creature who has all that life can
give him. Yes ! I will do it. I, the very man for whom he
has evidenced so great a contempt."

From that moment the tranquillity which was so alien to
Julien's real character quickly disappeared. He was obsessed
by an anxious desire that Madame de Renal should abandon
her hand to him.

M. de Renal was talking politics with vehemence ; two or
three commercial men in Verrieres had been growing distinctly
richer than he was, and were going to annoy him over the
elections. Madame Derville was listening to him. Irritated
by these tirades, Julien brought his chair nearer Madame de
Renal. All his movements were concealed by the darkness.
He dared to put his hand very near to the pretty arm which
was left uncovered by the dress. He was troubled and had
lost control of his mind. He brought his face near to that
pretty arm and dared to put his lips on it.

Madame de Renal shuddered. Her husband was four paces
away. She hastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the
same time to push him back a little. As M. de Renal was
continuing his insults against those ne'er-do-wells and
Jacobins who were growing so rich, Julien covered the hand
which had been abandoned to him with kisses, which were
either really passionate or at any rate seemed so to Madame
de Renal. But the poor woman had already had the proofs
on that same fatal day that the man whom she adored, without
owning it to herself, loved another ! During the whole time
Julien had been absent she had been the prey to an extreme
unhappiness which had made her reflect.

" What," she said to herself, " Am I going to love, am I
going to be in love ? Am I, a married woman, going to fall
in love ? But," she said to herself, " I have never felt for my

AN EVENING 69

husband this dark madness, which never permits of my
keeping Julien out of my thoughts. After all, he is only a
child who is full of respect for me. This madness will be
fleeting. In what way do the sentiments which I may have
for this young man concern my husband? M. de Renal
would be bored by the conversations which I have with Julien
on imaginative subjects. As for him, he simply thinks of his
business. I am not taking anything away from him to give
to Julien."

No hypocrisy had sullied the purity of that naive soul, now
swept away by a passion such as it had never felt before. She
deceived herself, but without knowing it. But none the less, a
certain instinct of virtue was alarmed. Such were the combats
which were agitating her when Julien appeared in the garden.
She heard him speak and almost at the same moment she saw
him sit down by her side. Her soul was as it were transported
by this charming happiness which had for the last fortnight
surprised her even more than it had allured. Everything was
novel for her. None the less, she said to herself after some
moments, "the mere presence of Julien is quite enough to
blot out all his wrongs." She was frightened; it was then
that she took away her hand.

His passionate kisses, the like of which she had never
received before, made her forget that perhaps he loved another
woman. Soon he was no longer guilty in her eyes. The
cessation of that poignant pain which suspicion had engendered
and the presence of a happiness that she had never even
dreamt of, gave her ecstasies of love and of mad gaiety. The
evening was charming for everyone, except the mayor of
Verrieres, who was unable to forget his parvenu manufacturers.
Julien left off thinking about his black ambition, or about
those plans of his which were so difficult to accomplish. For
the first time in his life he was led away by the power of beauty.
Lost in a sweetly vague reverie, quite alien to his character,
and softly pressing that hand, which he thought ideally pretty,
he half listened to the rustle of the leaves of the pine trees,
swept by the light night breeze, and to the dogs of the mill
on the Doubs, who barked in the distance.

But this emotion was one of pleasure and not passion. As
he entered his room, he only thought of one happiness, that
of taking up again his favourite book. When one is twenty

70 THE RED AND THE BLACK

the idea of the world and the figure to be cut in it dominate
everything.

He soon, however, laid down the book. As the result of
thinking of the victories of Napoleon, he had seen a new
element in his own victory. " Yes," he said to himself, " I
have won a battle. I must exploit it. I must crush the pride
of that proud gentleman while he is in retreat. That would
be real Napoleon. I must ask him for three days' holiday to
go and see my friend Fouque If he refuses me I will threaten
to give him notice, but he will yield the point.

Madame de Renal could not sleep a wink. It seemed as
though, until this moment, she had never lived. She was
unable to distract her thoughts from the happiness of feeling
Julian cover her hand with his burning kisses.

Suddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind. All
the loathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can
invest sensual love presented itself to her imagination. These
ideas essayed to pollute the divinely tender image which she
was fashioning of Julien, and of the happiness of loving him.
The future began to be painted in terrible colours. She began
to regard herself as contemptible.

That moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown
countries. During the evening she had tasted a novel
happiness. Now she found herself suddenly plunged in an
atrocious unhappiness. She had never had any idea of such
sufferings; they troubled her reason. She thought for a
moment of confessing to her husband that she was appre-
hensive of loving Julien. It would be an opportunity
of speaking of him. Fortunately her memory threw up
a maxim which her aunt had once given her on the
eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of
making confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all
a master. She wrung her hands in the excess of her grief.
She was driven this way and that by clashing and painful
ideas. At one moment she feared that she was not loved.
The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as much as if
she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in
the public square of Verrieres, with a placard to explain her
adultery to the populace.

Madame de Renal had no experience of life. Even in the
full possession of her faculties, and when fully exercising her

AN EVENING 71

reason, she would never have appreciated any distinction
between being guilty in the eyes of God, and finding herself
publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of universal
contempt.

When the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace
which in her view that crime brought in its train, left her
some rest, she began to dream of the sweetness of living
innocently with Julien as in the days that had gone by.

She found herself confronted with the horrible idea that
Julien loved another woman. She still saw his pallor when he
had feared to lose her portrait, or to compromise her by
exposing it to view. For the first time she had caught fear on
that tranquil and noble visage. He had never shewn such
emotion to her or her children. This additional anguish
reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul
is capable of enduring. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal
uttered cries which woke up her maid. Suddenly she saw the
brightness of a light appear near her bed, and recognized
Elisa. " Is it you he loves ? " she exclaimed in her delirium.

Fortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible
trouble in which she found her mistress that she paid no
attention to this singular expression. Madame de Renal
appreciated her imprudence. ' ' I have the fever," she said to
her, " and I think I am a little delirious." Completely
woken up by the necessity of controlling herself, she be-
came less unhappy. Reason, regained that supreme control
which the semi-somnolent state had taken away. To free
herself from her maid's continual stare, she ordered her maid
to read the paper, and it was as she listened to the monoton-
ous voice of this girl, reading a long article from the
Quotidienne that Madame de Renal made the virtuous
resolution to treat Tulien with absolute coldness when she
saw him again

CHAPTER XII

A JOURNEY

Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of character
may exist in the provinces. SiZyes

At five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Renal
was visible, Julien obtained a three days' holiday from her
husband. Contrary to his expectation Julien found himself
desirous of seeing her again. He kept thinking of that pretty
hand of hers. He went down into the garden, but Madame
de Renal kept him waiting for a long time. But if Julien
had loved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the
pane behind the half-closed blinds on the first floor. She was
looking at him. Finally, in spite of her resolutions, she
decided to go into the garden. Her habitual pallor had
been succeeded by more lively hues. This woman, simple as
she was, was manifestly agitated ; a sentiment of constraint,
and even of anger, altered that expression of profound
serenity which seemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar
interests of life and gave so much charm to that divine
face.

Julien approached her with eagerness, admiring those
beautiful arms which were just visible through a hastily
donned shawl. The freshness of the morning air seemed to
accentuate still more the brilliance of her complexion which
the agitation of the past night rendered all the more sus-
ceptible to all impressions. This demure and pathetic beauty,
which was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never
found in the inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a
faculty in his own soul which he had never before realised.
Engrossed in his admiration of the charms on which his
his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for granted the friendly

A JOURNEY 73

welcome which he was expecting to receive. He was all the
more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to
manifest to him, and through which he thought he could even
distinguish the intention of putting him in his place.

The smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he
remembered his rank in society, especially from the point of
view of a rich and noble heiress. In a single moment his
face exhibited nothing but haughtiness and anger against
himself. He felt violently disgusted that he could have put
off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so
hum ilia tig a welcome.

" It is only a fool," he said to himself, " who is angry with
others ; a stone falls because it is heavy. Am I going to be
a child all my life ? How on earth is it that I manage to con-
tract the charming habit of showing my real self to those people
simply in return for their money ? If I want to win their
respect and that of my own self, I must shew them that it is
simply a business transaction between my poverty and their
wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues away from
their insolence, and is situated in too high a sphere to be
affected by their petty marks of favour or disdain."

While these feelings were crowding the soul of the young
tutor, his mobile features assumed an expression of ferocity
and injured pride. Madame de Renal was extremely
troubled. The virtuous coldness that she had meant to put
into her welcome was succeeded by an expression of interest
an interest animated by all the surprise brought about by
the sudden change which she had just seen. The empty
morning platitudes about their health and the fineness of the
day suddenly dried up. Julien's judgment was disturbed by
no passion, and he soon found a means of manifesting to
Madame de Renal how light was the friendly relationship that
he considered existed between them. He said nothing to her
about the little journey that he was going to make ; saluted
her, and went away.

As she watched him go, she was overwhelmed by the
sombre haughtiness which she read in that look which had
been so gracious the previous evening. Her eldest son ran
up from the bottom of the garden, and said as he kissed her,

" We have a holiday, M. Julien is going on a journey."

At these words, Madame de Renal felt seized by a deadly

74 THE RED AND THE BLACK

coldness. She was unhappy by reason of her virtue, and even
more unhappy by reason of her weakness.

This new event engrossed her imagination, and she was
transported far beyond the good resolutions which she owed
to the awful night she had just passed. It was not now a
question of resisting that charming lover, but of losing him
for ever.

It was necessary to appear at breakfast. To complete her
anguish, M. de Renal and Madame Derville talked of nothing
but Julien's departure. The mayor of Verrieres had noticed
something unusual in the firm tone in which he had asked for
a holiday.

" That little peasant has no doubt got somebody else's offer
up his sleeve, but that somebody else, even though it's M.
Valenod, is bound to be a little discouraged by the sum of
six hundred francs, which the annual salary now tots up
to. He must have asked yesterday at Verrieres for a
period of three days to think it over, and our little gentleman
runs off to the mountains this morning so as not to be
obliged to give me an answer. Think of having to reckon
with a wretched workman who puts on airs, but that's what
we've come to."

" If my husband, who does not know how deeply he has
wounded Julien, thinks that he will leave us, what can I think
myself?" said Madame de Renal to herself. " Yes, that is all
decided." In order to be able at any rate to be free to cry,
and to avoid answering madame Derville's questions, she
pleaded an awful headache, and went to bed.

" That's what women are," repeated M. de Renal, " there
is always something out of order in those complicated
machines," and he went off jeering.

While Madame de Renal was a prey to all the poignancy of
the terrible passion in which chance had involved her, Julien
went merrily on his way, surrounded by the most beautiful
views that mountain scenery can offer. He had to cross the
great chain north of Vergy. The path which he followed
rose gradually among the big beech woods, and ran into
infinite spirals on the slope of the high mountain which forms
the northern boundary of the Doubs valley. Soon the
traveller's view, as he passed over the lower slopes bounding
the course of the Doubs towards the south, extends as far as

A JOURNEY 75

the fertile plains of Burgundy and Beaujolais. However
insensible was the soul of this ambitious youth to this kind of
beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time to look
at a spectacle at once so vast and so impressive.

Finally, he reached the summit of the great mountain, near
which he had to pass in order to arrive by this cross-country
route at the solitary valley where lived his friend Fouque, the
young wood merchant. Julien was in no hurry to see him ;
either him, or any other human being. Hidden like a bird of
prey amid the bare rocks which crowned the great mountain,
he could see a long way off anyone coming near him. He
discovered a little grotto in the middle of the almost vertical
slope of one of the rocks. He found a way to it, and was
soon ensconced in this retreat. " Here," he said, " with
eyes brilliant with joy, men cannot hurt me." It occurred to
him to indulge in the pleasure of writing down those thoughts
of his which were so dangerous to him everywhere else. A
square stone served him for a desk ; his pen flew. He saw
nothing of what was around him. He noticed at last that the
sun was setting behind the distant mountains of Beaujolais.

" Why shouldn't I pass the night here ? " he said to himself.
" I have bread, and I am free." He felt a spiritual exultation
at the sound of that great word. The necessity of playing the
hypocrite resulted in his not being free, even at Fouque's.
Leaning his head on his two hands, Julien stayed in the grotto,
more happy than he had ever been in his life, thrilled by his
dreams, and by the bliss of his freedom. Without realising it,
he saw all the rays of the twilight become successively ex-
tinguished. Surrounded by this immense obscurity, his soul
wandered into the contemplation of what he imagined that he
would one day meet in Paris. First it was a woman, much more
beautiful and possessed of a much more refined temperament
than anything he could have found in the provinces. He
loved with passion, and was loved. If he separated from her
for some instants, it was only to cover himself with glory, and
to deserve to be loved still more.

A young man brought up in the environment of the sad
truths of Paris society, would, on reaching this point in his
romance, even if we assume him possessed of Julien's imagina-
tion, have been brought back to himself by the cold irony of
the situation. Great deeds would have disappeared from ou

76 THE RED AND THE BLACK

his ken together with hope of achieving them and have been
succeeded by the platitude. " If one leave one's mistress one
runs alas ! the risk of being deceived two or three times a day."
But the young peasant saw nothing but the lack of opportunity
between himself and the most heroic feats.

But a deep night had succeeded the day, and there were
still two leagues to walk before he could descend to the cabin
in which Fouque lived. Before leaving the little cave, Julien
made a light and carefully burnt all that he had written. He
quite astonished his friend when he knocked at his door at
one o'clock in the morning. He found Fouque engaged in
making up his accounts. He was a young man of high
stature, rather badly made, with big, hard features, a never-
ending nose, and a large fund of good nature concealed
beneath this repulsive appearance.

" Have you quarelled with M. de Renal then that you turn
up unexpectedly like this ? " Julien told him, but in a suitable
way, the events of the previous day.

" Stay with me," said Fouque to him. " I see that you know
M. de Renal, M. Valenod, the sub-prefect Maugron, the cure
Chelan. You have understood the subtleties of the character
of those people. So there you are then, quite qualified to
attend auctions. You know arithmetic better than I do ; you
will keep my accounts ; I make a lot in my business. The
impossibility of doing everything myself, and the fear of taking
a rascal for my partner prevents me daily from undertaking
excellent business. It's scarcely a month since I put Michaud
de Saint-Amand, whom I haven't seen for six years, and whom
I ran across at the sale at Pontarlier in the way of making six
thousand francs. Why shouldn't it have been you who made
those six thousand francs, or at any rate three thousand.
For if I had had you with me that day, I would have raised
the bidding for that lot of timber and everybody else would
soon have run away. Be my partner.

This offer upset Julien. It spoilt the train of his mad
dreams. Fouque showed his accounts to Julien during the
whole of the supper which the two friends prepared themselves
like the Homeric heroes (for Fouque lived alone) and proved
to him all the advantages offered by his timber business.
Fouque had the highest opinion of the gifts and character of
Julien.

A JOURNEY 77

When, finally, the latter was alone in his little room of
pinewood, he said to himself : " It is true I can make some
thousands of francs here and then take up with advantage the
profession of a soldier, or of a priest, according to the fashion
then prevalent in France. The little hoard that I shall
have amassed will remove all petty difficulties. In the solitude
of this mountain I shall have dissipated to some extent my
awful ignorance of so many of the things which make up the
life of all those men of fashion. But Fouque has given up all
thoughts of marriage, a<nd at the same time keeps telling me
that solitude makes him unhappy. It is clear that if he takes
a partner who has no capital to put into his business, he does
so in the hopes of getting a companion who will never leave
him."

"Shall I deceive my friend," exclaimed Julien petulantly.
This being who found hypocrisy and complete callousness
his ordinary means of self-preservation could not, on this
occasion, endure the idea of the slightest lack of delicate
feeling towards a man whom he loved.

But suddenly Julien was happy. He had a reason for a
refusal. What ! Shall I be coward enough to waste seven or
eight years. I shall get to twenty-eight in that way ! But at
that age Bonaparte had achieved his greatest feats. When
I shall have made in obscurity a little money by frequenting
timber sales, and earning the good graces of some rascally
under-strappers who will guarantee that I shall still have the
sacred fire with which one makes a name for oneself?

The following morning, Julien with considerable sangfroid,
said in answer to the good Fouque, who regarded the matter
of the partnership as settled, that his vocation for the holy
ministry of the altars would not permit him to accept it.
Fouque did not return to the subject.

" But just think," he repeated to him, " I'll make you my
partner, or if you prefer it, I'll give you four thousand francs
a year, and you want to return to that M. de Renal of yours,
who despises you like the mud on his shoes. When you have
got two hundred louis in front of you, what is to prevent you
from entering the seminary ? I'll go further : I will undertake
to procure for you the best living in the district, for," added

Fouque, lowering his voice, I supply firewood to M. le

M. le M . I provide them with first quality oak,

78 THE RED AND THE BLACK

but they only pay me for plain wood, but never was money
better invested.

Nothing could conquer Julien's vocation. Fouque finished
by thinking him a little mad. The third day, in the early
morning, Julien left his friend, and passed the day amongst
the rocks of the great mountain. He found his little cave
again, but he had no longer peace of mind. His friend's
offers had robbed him of it. He found himself, not between
^ice and virtue, like Hercules, but between mediocrity coupled
with an assured prosperity, and all the heroic dreams of his
youth. " So I have not got real determination after all," he
said to himself, and it was his doubt on this score which
pained him the most. " I am not of the stuff of which great
men are made, because I fear that eight years spent in earning
a livelihood will deprive me of that sublime energy which
inspires the accomplishment of extraordinary feats."

CHAPTER XIII

THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS

A novel : a mirror which one takes out on one's walk
along the high road. Saint-Real.

When Julien perceived the picturesque ruins of the old church
at Vergy, he noticed that he had not given a single thought to
Madame de Renal since the day before yesterday. "The
other day, when I took my leave, that woman made me realise
the infinite distance which separated us ; she treated me like
a labourer's son. No doubt she wished to signify her repentance
for having allowed me to hold her hand the evening before.
. . It is, however very pretty, is that hand. What a
charm, what a nobility is there in that woman's expression !

The possibility of making a fortune with Fouque gave a
certain facility to Julien's logic. It was not spoilt quite so
frequently by the irritation and the keen consciousness of his
poverty and low estate in the eyes of the world. Placed as it
were on a high promontory, he was able to exercise his
judgment, and had a commanding view, so to speak, of both
extreme poverty and that competence which he still called
wealth. He was far from judging his position really philo-
sophically, but he had enough penetration to feel different
after this little journey into the mountain.

He was struck with the extreme uneasiness with which
Madame de Renal listened to the brief account which she had
asked for of his journey. Fouque had had plans of marriage,
and unhappy love affairs, and long confidences on this subject
had formed the staple of the two friends' conversation. Having
found happiness too soon, Fouque had realised that he was
not the only one who was loved. All these accounts had
astonished Julien. He had learnt many new things. His

8o THE RED AND THE BLACK

solitary life of imagination and suspicion had kept him remote
from anything which could enlighten him.

During his absence, life had been nothing for Madame de
Rnal but a series of tortures, which, though different, were all
unbearable. She was really ill.

" Now mind," said Madame Derville to her when she saw
Julien arrive, " you don't go into the garden this evening in
your weak state ; the damp air will make your complaint twice
as bad."

Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who
was always scolded by M. de Renal by reason of the excessive
simplicity of her dress, had just got some openwork stockings
and some charming little shoes which had come from Paris.
For three days Madame de Renal's only distraction had been
to cut out a summer dress of a pretty little material which
was very fashionable, and get it made with express speed by
Elisa. This dress could scarcely have been finished a few
moments before Julien's arrival, but Madame de Renal put
it on immediately. Her friend had no longer any doubt.
" She loves," unhappy woman, said Madame Derville to her-
self. She understood all the strange symptoms of the
malady.

She saw her speak to Julien. The most violent blush was
succeeded by pallor. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes,
which were riveted on those of the young tutor. Madame de
Renal expected every minute that he would give an explana-
tion of his conduct, and announce that he was either going
to leave the house or stay there. Julien carefully avoided
that subject, and did not even think of it. After terrible
struggles, Madame de Renal eventually dared to say to him
in a trembling voice that mirrored all her passion :

" Are you going to leave your pupils to take another
place?"

Julien was struck by Madame de Renal's hesitating voice
and look. "That woman loves me," he said to himself!
" But after this temporary moment of weakness, for which
her pride is no doubt reproaching her, and as soon as she
has ceased fearing that I shall leave, she will be as haughty
as ever." This view of their mutual position passed through
Julien's mind as rapidly as a flash of lightning. He answered
with some hesitation,

THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS 81

" I shall be extremely distressed to leave children who are
so nice and so well-born, but perhaps it will be necessary.
One has duties to oneself as well."

As he pronounced the expression, " well-born " (it was one
of those aristocratic phrases which Julien had recently learnt),
he became animated by a profound feeling of antipathy.

" I am not well-born," he said to himself, " in that woman's
eyes."

As Madame de Renal listened to him, she admired his
genius and his beauty, and the hinted possibility of his
departure pierced her heart. All her friends at Verrieres
who had come to dine at Vergy during Julien's absence had
complimented her almost jealously on the astonishing man
whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth. It
was not that they understood anything about the progress of
children. The feat of knowing his Bible by heart, and what
is more, of knowing it in Latin, had struck the inhabitants of
Verrieres with an admiration which will last perhaps a
century.

Julien, who never spoke to anyone, was ignorant of all this.
If Madame de Renal had possessed the slightest presence
of mind, she would have complimented him on the reputation
which he had won, and Julien's pride, once satisfied, he
would have been sweet and amiable towards her, especially as
he thought her new dress charming. Madame de Renal
was also pleased with her pretty dress, and with what Julien
had said to her about it, and wanted to walk round the garden.
But she soon confessed that she was incapable of walking.
She had taken the traveller's arm, and the contact of that
arm, far from increasing her strength, deprived her of it
completely.

It was night, They had scarcely sat down before Julien,
availing himself of his old privilege, dared to bring his lips
near his pretty neighbour's arm, and to take her hand. He
kept thinking of the boldness which Fouque had exhibited
with his mistresses and not of Madame de Renal ; the word
" well-born " was still heavy on his heart. He felt his
hand pressed, but experienced no pleasure. So far from his
being proud, or even grateful for the sentiment that Madame
de Renal was betraying that evening by only too evident signs,
he was almost insensible to her beauty, her elegance, and her

6

82 THE RED AND THE BLACK

freshness. Purity of soul, and the abseuce of all hateful
emotion, doubtless prolong the duration of youth. It is
the face which ages first with the majority of women.

Julien sulked all the evening. Up to the present he had
only been angry with the social order, but from that time
that Fouque had offered him an ignoble means of obtaining
a competency, he was irritated with himself. Julien was so
engrossed in his thoughts, that, although from time to time
he said a few words to the ladies, he eventually let go Madame
de RenaPs hand without noticing it. This action over-
whelmed the soul of the poor woman. She saw in it her
whole fate.

If she had been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue
would possibly have found strength to resist him. But
trembling lest she should lose him for ever, she was distracted
by her passion to the point of taking again Julien's hand,
which he had left in his absent-mindedness leaning on the
back of the chair. This action woke up this ambitious youth ;
he would have liked to have had for witnesses all those proud
nobles who had regarded him at meals, when he was at the
bottom of the table with the children, with so condescending
a smile. "That woman cannot despise me; in that case,"
he said to himself. " I ought to shew my appreciation of
her beauty. I owe it to myself to be her lover." That idea
would not have occurred to him before the naive confidences
which his friend had made.

The sudden resolution which he had just made formed an
agreeable distraction. He kept saying to himself, " I must
have one of those two women ; he realised that he would have
very much preferred to have paid court to Madame Derville.
It was not that she was more agreeable, but that she had
always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his knowledge,
and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket
folded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de
Renal.

It was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the
whites of his eyes, standing by the door of the house and
not daring to ring, that he made the most alluring appeal to
Madame de Renal's imagination.

As he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the
conquest of Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the

THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS 83

taste which Madame de Renal was manifesting for him, was
out of the question. He was thus brought back to the latter
lady. " What do I know of the character of that woman ? "
said Julien to himself. " Only this : before my journey, I used
to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I
take my hand away, and she seizes and presses it. A fine
opportunity to pay her back all the contempt she had had for
me. God knows how many lovers she has had, probably she
is only deciding in my favour by reason of the easiness of
assignations."

Such, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation.
The soul of a young man of twenty, possessed of any
education, is a thousand leagues away from that abandon
without which love is frequently but the most tedious of
duties.

" I owe it all the more to myself," went on the petty vanity
of Julien, " to succeed with that woman, by reason of the
fact that if I ever make a fortune, and I am reproached by
anyone with my menial position as a tutor, I shall then be
able to give out that it was love which got me the post."

Julien again took his hand away from Madame de Renal,
and then took her hand again and pressed it. As they went
back to the drawing-room about midnight, Madame de Renal
said to him in a whisper.

"You are leaving us, you are going?"

Julien answered with a sigh.

" I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately.
It is wrong . . . how wrong indeed for a young priest ? "
Madame de Renal leant upon his arm, and with so much
abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of Julien's.

The nights of these two persons were quite different.
Madame de Renal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest
moral pleasure. A coquettish young girl, who loves early in
life, gets habituated to the trouble of love, and when she
reaches the age of real passion, finds the charm of novelty
lacking. As Madame de Renal had never read any novels,
all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No
mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the
future. She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as
she was at the present moment. Even the idea of virtue and
of her sworn fidelity to M. de Renal, which had agitated

84 THE RED AND THE BLACK

her some days past, now presented itself in vain, and was
sent about its business like an importunate visitor. " I will
never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Renal;
" we will live in the future like we have been living for the
last month. He shall be a friend."

CHAPTER XIV

THE ENGLISH SCISSORS

A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and
yet used red rouge. Polidori.

Fouque's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's
happiness ; he could not make up his mind to any definite
course. " Alas ! perhaps I am lacking in character. I should
have been a bad soldier of Napoleon. At least," he added,
" my little intrigue with the mistress of the house will distract
me a little."

Happily for him, even in this little subordinate incident,
his inner emotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant
words. He was frightened of Madame de Renal because of
her pretty dress. In his eyes, that dress was a vanguard of
Paris. His pride refused to leave anything to chance and
the inspiration of the moment. He made himself a very
minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of
Fouque, and a little that he had read about love in the Bible.
As he was very nervous, though he did not admit it to him-
self, he wrote down this plan.

Madame de Renal was alone with him for a moment in
the drawing-room on the following morning.

" Have you no other name except Julien," she said.

Our hero was at a loss to answer so flattering a question.
This circumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If
he had not been stupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's
quick wit would have served him well, and the surprise would
only have intensified the quickness of his perception.

He was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame
de Renal quickly forgave him. She attributed it to a charm-
ing frankness. And an air of frankness was the very thing

86 THE RED AND THE BLACK

which in her view was just lacking in this man who was
acknowledged to have so much genius.

" That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of
suspicion," said Madame Derville to her sometimes. " I
think he looks as if he were always thinking, and he never
acts without calculation. He is a sly fox."

Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of
not having known what answer to make to Madame de
Renal.

" A man like I am ought to make up for this check ! " and
seizing the moment when they were passing from one room to
another, he thought it was his duty to give Madame de Renal
a kiss.

Nothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable,
and nothing more imprudent both for him and for her. They
were within an inch of being noticed. Madame de Renal
thought him mad. She was frightened, and above all, shocked.
This stupidity reminded her of M. Valenod.

" What would happen to me," she said to herself, " if I were
alone with him ? " All her virtue returned, because her love
was waning.

She so arranged it that one of her children always remained
with her. Julien found the day very tedious, and passed it
entirely in clumsily putting into operation his plan of seduction.
He did not look at Madame de Renal on a single occasion
without that look having a reason, but nevertheless he was not
sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was not succeeding at
all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in being
fascinating.

Madame de Renal did not recover from her astonishment
at finding him so awkward and at the same time so bold.
" It is the timidity of love in men of intellect," she said to
herself with an inexpressible joy. " Could it be possible that
he had never been loved by my rival ? "

After breakfast Madame de Renal went back to the drawing-
room to receive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-
prefect of Bray. She was working at a little frame of fancy-work
some distance from the ground. Madame Derville was at her
side; that was how she was placed when our hero thought it
suitable to advance his boot in the full light and press the
pretty foot of Madame de Renal, whose open-work stockings,

THE ENGLISH SCISSORS 87

and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of
the gallant sub-prefect.

Madame de Renal was very much afraid, and let fall her
scissors, her ball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's
movement could be passed for a clumsy effort, intended to
prevent the fall of the scissors, which presumably he had seen
slide. Fortunately, these little scissors of English steel were
broken, and Madame de Renal did not spare her regrets that
Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her. "You
noticed them falling before I did you could have prevented
it, instead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving
me a very big kick." All this took in the sub-perfect, but not
Madame Derville. " That pretty boy has very silly manners,"
she thought. The social code of a provincial capital never
forgives this kind of lapse.

Madame de Renal found an opportunity of saying to Julien,
" Be prudent, I order you."

Julien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset. He
deliberated with himself for a long time, in order to ascertain
whether or not he ought to be angry at the expression " I
order you." He was silly enough to think she might have
said " I order you," if it were some question concerning the
children's education, but in answering my love she puts me
on an equality. It is impossible to love without equality . . .
and all his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality.
He angrily repeated to himself that verse of Corneille which
Madame Derville had taught him some days before.

' L'amour
Fait les egalites, et ne les cherche pas."

Julien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but
yet insisted on playing the role of a Don Juan, made a shock-
ing fool of himself all day. He had only one sensible idea.
Bored with himself and Madame de Renal, he viewed with
apprehension the advance of the evening when he would have
to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told
M. de Renal that he was going to Verrieres to see the cure.
He left after dinner, and only came back in the night.

At Verrieres Julien found M. Chelan occupied in moving.
He had just been deprived of his living; the curate Maslon

88 THE RED AND THE BLACK

was replacing him. Julien helped the good cure, and it
occurred to him to write to Fouque that the irresistible
mission which he felt for the holy ministry had previously
prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had
just seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be
safer not to enter into Holy Orders.

Julien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the
dismissal of the cure of Verrieres so as to leave himself a loop-
hole for returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy pru-
dence routing the spirit of heroism from his mind.

CHAPTER XV

THE COCK S SONG

Amour en latin faict amour ;
Or done provient d'amour la mart,
Et, par avant, souley qui moreq,
Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord.

Blason D'Amour.

If Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he
so gratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated
himself the following day on the effect produced by his journey
to Verrieres. His absence had caused his clumsiness to be
forgotten. But on that day also he was rather sulky. He
had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and with singular courage
he communicated it to Madame de Renal. They had
scarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his
mouth near Madame de Renal's ear without waiting till it
was sufficiently dark and at the risk of compromising her
terribly, said to her,

" Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your
room, I must tell you something."

Julien trembled lest his request should be granted. His
rakish pose weighed him down so terribly that if he could
have followed his own inclination he would have returned to
his room for several days and refrained from seeing the ladies
any more. He realised that he had spoiled by his clever
conduct of last evening all the bright prospects of the day
that had just passed, and was at his wits' end what to do.

Madame de Renal answered the impertinent declaration
which Julien had dared to make to her with indignation
which was real and in no way exaggerated. He thought he
could see contempt in her curt reply. The expression

9 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

" for shame," had certainly occurred in that whispered answer.

Julien went to the children's room under the pretext of
having something to say to them, and on his return he placed
himself beside Madame Derville and very far from Madame
de Renal. He thus deprived himself of all possibility of
taking her hand. The conversation was serious, and Julien
acquitted himself very well, apart from a few moments of
silence during which he was cudgelling his brains.

" Why can't I invent some pretty manoeuvre," he said to him-
self which will force Madame de Renal to vouchsafe to me
those unambiguous signs of tenderness which a few days ago
made me think that she was mine.

Julien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate
plight to which he had brought his affairs. Nothing, however,
would have embarassed him more than success.

When they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him
think that he enjoyed Madame Derville's contempt, and that
probably he stood no better with Madame de Renal.

Feeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien
did not sleep. He was leagues away from the idea of giving
up all intriguing and planning, and of living from day to day
with Madame de Renal, and of being contented like a child
with the happiness brought by every day.

He racked his brains inventing clever manoeuvres, which an
instant afterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly,
was very unhappy when two o'clock rang from the castle clock.

The noise woke him up like the cock's crow woke up St.
Peter. The most painful episode was now timed to begin
he had not given a thought to his impertinent proposition,
since the moment when he had made it and it had been so
badly received.

" I have told her that I will go to her at two o'clock," he
said to himself as he got up, " I may be inexperienced and
coarse, as the son of a peasant naturally would be. Madame
Derville has given me to understand as much, but at any rate,
I will not be weak."

Julien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage,
for he had never put his self-control to so painful a test. As
he opened his door, he was trembling to such an extent that
his knees gave way under him, and he was forced to lean
against the wall.

THE COCK'S SONG 91

He was without shoes ; he went and listened at M. de
Renal's door, and could hear his snoring. He was disconso-
late, he had no longer any excuse for not going to her room.
But, Great Heaven ! What was he to do there ? He had no
plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so nervous
that he would have been incapable of carrying it out.

Eventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had
been walking to his death, he entered the little corridor that
led to Madame de Renal's room. He opened the door with
a trembling hand and made a frightful noise.

There was light ; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece.
He had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him
enter, Madame de Renal got quickly out of bed. " Wretch,"
she cried. There was a little confusion. Julien forgot his
useless plans, and turned to his natural rle. To fail to please
so charming a woman appeared to him the greatest of
misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw
himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was
speaking to him with extreme harshness, he burst into
tears.

When Julien came out of Madame de Renal's room some
hours^afterwards, one could have said, adopting the conventional
language of the novel, that there was nothing left to be desired.
In fact, he owed to the love he had inspired, and to the
unexpected impression which her alluring charms had produced
upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics would
never have led him.

But victim that he was of a distorted pride, he pretended
even in the sweetest moments to play the role of a man
accustomed to the subjugation of women : he made incredible
but deliberate efforts to spoil his natural charm. Instead of
watching the transports which he was bringing into existence,
and those pangs of remorse which only set their keenness into
fuller relief, the idea of duty was continually before his eyes.
He feared a frightful remorse, and eternal ridicule, if he de-
parted from the ideal model he proposed to follow. In a word,
the very quality which made Julien into a superior being
was precisely that which prevented him from savouring the
happiness which was placed within his grasp. It's like the
case of a young girl of sixteen with a charming complexion
who is mad enough to put on rouge before going to a ball.

92 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Mortally terrified by the apparition of Julien, Madame de
Renal was soon a prey to the most cruel alarm. The prayers
and despair of Julien troubled her keenly.

Even when there was nothing left for her to refuse him she
pushed Julien away from her with a genuine indignation, and
straightway threw herself into his arms. There was no plan
apparent in all this conduct. She thought herself eternally
damned, and tried to hide from herself the sight of hell by
loading Julien with the wildest caresses. In a word, nothing
would have been lacking in our hero's happiness, not even an
ardent sensibility in the woman whom he had just captured, if
he had only known how to enjoy it. Julien's departure did
not in any way bring to an end those ecstacies which thrilled
her in spite of herself, and those troubles of remorse which
lacerated her.

" My God ! being happy being loved, is that all it comes
to ? " This was Julien's first thought as he entered his room.
He was a prey to the astonishment and nervous anxiety of
the man who has just obtained what he has long desired.
He has been accustomed to desire, and has no longer anything
to desire, and nevertheless has no memories. Like a soldier
coming back from parade. Julien was absorbed in rehearsing
the details of his conduct. " Have I failed in nothing which
I owe to myself? Have I played my part well? "

And what a part ! the part of a man accustomed to be
brilliant with women.

CHATER XVI

THE DAY AFTER

He turned his lips to hers and with his hand
Called back the tangles of her wandering hair.

Don Juan, c. i, st. 170.

Happily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too
agitated and too astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the
man who had in a single moment become the whole to world
her.

" Oh, my God ! " she said to herself, as she pressed him
to retire when she saw the dawn break, "if my husband has
heard the noise, I am lost." Julien, who had had the time
to make up some phrases, remembered this one,

" Would you regret your life ? "

" Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not
regret having known you."

Julien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his
room in broad daylight and with deliberate imprudence.

The continuous attention with which he kept on studying his
slightest actions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of
experience had only one advantage. When he saw Madame
de Renal again at breakfast his conduct was a masterpiece of
prudence. .

As for her, she could not look at him without blushing up
to the eyes, and could not live a moment without looking at
him. She realised her own nervousness, and her efforts to
hide it redoubled. Julien only lifted his eyes towards her
once. At first Madame de Renal admired his prudence :
soon seeing that this single look was not repeated, she became
alarmed. Could it be that he does not love me ? she said to
herself. Alas ! I am quite old for him. I am ten years
older than he is."

94 THE RED AND THE BLACK

As she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she
pressed Julien's hand. In the surprise caused by so singular
a mark of love, he regarded her with passion, for he had
thought her very pretty over breakfast, and while keeping
his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking of the
details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal.
It did not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to
take away nearly completely all her remorse towards her
husband.

The husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was
not so with Madame Derville. She thought she saw Madame
de Renal on the point of succumbing. During the whole day
her bold and incisive friendship regaled her cousin with those
inuendoes which were intended to paint in hideous colours
the dangers she was running.

Madame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with
Julien. She wished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite
of the unalterable sweetness of her character, she was several
times on the point of notifying her friend how officious she
was.

Madame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening
in the garden, that she found herself placed between Madame
de Renal and Julien. Madame de Renal, who had thought
in her imagination how delicious it would be to press Julien's
hand and carry it to her lips, was not able to address a single
word to him.

This hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by
one pang of remorse. She had so scolded Julien for his
imprudence in coming to her room on the preceding night,
that she trembled lest he should not come to-nignt. She
left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in her room,
but not being able tc control her impatience, she went and
glued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty
and passion which devoured her, she did not dare to enter.
This action seemed to her the greatest possible meanness,
for it forms the basis of a provincial proverb.

The servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last
compelled her to return to her room. Two hours of waiting
were two centuries of torture.

Julien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to
accomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself.

THE DAY AFTER 95

As one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room,
assured himself that the master of the house was soundly
asleep, and appeared in Madame de Renal's room. To-night
he experienced more happiness by the side of his love,
for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play.
He had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de
Renal said to him about his age contributed to give him some
assurance.

" Alas ! I am ten years older than you. How can you
love me ? " she repeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed
her.

Julien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it
was genuine and he forgot almost entirely his own fear of
being ridiculous.

The foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior,
by reason of his obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's
transports reassured his timid mistress, she regained a little of
her happiness, and of her power to judge her lover. Happily, he
had not, on this occasion, that artificial air which had made
the assignation of the previous night a triumph rather than a
pleasure. If she had realised his concentration on playing a
part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all her
happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the
result of the difference in their ages.

Although Madame de Renal had never thought of the
theories of love, difference in age is next to difference in
fortune, one of the great commonplaces of provincial witticisms,
whenever love is the topic of conversation.

In a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour
of his age, and was desperately in love,

" One must own," he said to himself, " that she has an
angelic kindness of soul, and no one in the world is prettier."

He had almost completely given up playing a part. In a
moment of abandon, he even confessed to her all his
nervousness. This confidence raised the passion which he
was inspiring to its zenith. " And I have no lucky rival after
all," said Madame de Renal to herself with delight. She
ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to
be so interested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a
man.

When Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left

96 THE RED AND THE BLACK

50 reflect, she did not recover from her astonishment that so
great a happiness could exist; and that she had never had
anything of.

" Oh," she said to herself, " if I had only known Julien ten
years ago when I was still considered pretty."

Julien was far from having thoughts like these. His love
was still akin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor,
unfortunate and despised as he was, so beautiful a woman.
His acts of devotion, and his ecstacies at the sight of his
mistress's charms finished by reassuring her a little with
regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed a little
of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has
enjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long
time, she would have trembled for the duration of a love,
which only seemed to thrive on novelty and the intoxication
of a young man's vanity. In those moments when he forgot
his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically even the hats and
even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not sate
himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would
open her mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end
admiring the beauty and the order of everything that he
found there. His love leaned on him and looked at him-
He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which had
had been her wedding presents.

" I might have married a man like that," thought Madame
de Renal sometimes. " What a fiery soul ! What a deh'ghtful
life one would have with him ? "

As for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible
instruments of feminine artillery. " It is impossible," he said
to himself "for there to be anything more beautiful in Paris."
He could find no flaw in his happiness. The sincere
admiration and ecstacies of his mistress would frequently
make him forget that silly pose which had rendered him so
stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the
intrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual
hypocrisy, he found an extreme delight in confessing to this
great lady who admired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little
usages. His mistress's rank seemed to lift him above himself.
Madame de Renal, on her side, would find the sweetest thrill
of intellectual voluptuousness in thus instructing in a number
of little things this young man who was so full of genius,

THE DAY AFTER 97

and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day
to go so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could
not help admiring him. She thought it made them less
foolish. As for Madame Derville, she was very far from being
in a position to express the same sentiments. Rendered
desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that
her good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who
had literally lost her head, she left Vergy without giving the
explanation, which her friend carefully refrained from asking.
Madame de Renal shed a few tears for her, and soon found
her happiness greater than ever. As a result of her departure,
she found herself alone with her lover nearly the whole day.

Julien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful
society of his sweetheart, since, whenever he was alone,
Fouque's fatal proposition still continued to agitate him.
During the first days of his novel life there were moments
when the man who had never loved, who had never been
loved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being
sincere, that he was on the point of confessing to Madame de
Renal that ambition which up to then had been the very
essence of his existence. He would have liked to have been
able to consult her on the strange temptation which Fouque's
offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any
frankness impossible.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST DEPUTY

Oh, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away.

Two Gentlemen of Verona,

One evening when the sun was setting, and he was sitting
near his love, at the bottom of the orchard, far from all
intruders, he meditated deeply. " Will such sweet moments "
he said to himself " last for ever ? " His soul was engrossed in
the difficulty of deciding on a calling. He lamented that
great attack of unhappiness which comes at the end of
childhood and spoils the first years of youth in those who
are not rich.

" Ah ! " he exclaimed, " was not Napoleon the heaven-sent
saviour for young Frenchmen ? Who is to replace him ?
What will those unfortunate youths do without him, who,
even though they are richer than I am, have only just the few
crowns necessary to procure an education for themselves, but
have not at the age of twenty enough money to buy a man
and advance themselves in their career." "Whatever one
does," he added, with a deep sigh, "ths fatal memory will
always prevent our being happy."

He suddenly saw Madame de Renal frown. She assumed
a cold and disdainful air. She thought his way of looking at
things typical of a servant. Brought up as she was with the
idea that she was very rich, she took it for granted that Julien
was so also. She loved him a thousand times more than life
and set no store by money.

Julien was lar from guessing these ideas, but that frown
brought him back to earth. He had sufficient presence of

THE FIRST DEPUTY 99

mind to manipulate his phrases, and to give the noble lady
who was sitting so near him on the grass seat to understand
that the words he had just repeated had been heard by him
during his journey to his friend the wood merchant. It was
the logic of infidels.

" Well, have nothing to do with those people," said Madame
de Renal, still keeping a little of that icy air which had
suddenly succeeded an expression of the warmest tenderness.

This frown, or rather his remorse for his own imprudence,
was the first check to the illusion which was transporting'
Julien. He said to himself, " She is good and sweet, she has
a great fancy for me, but she has been brought up in the
enemy's camp. They must be particularly afraid of that class
of men of spirit who, after a good education, have not enough
money to take up a career. What would become of those
nobles if we had an opportunity of fighting them with equal
arms. Suppose me, for example, mayor of Verrieres, and as
well meaning and honest as M. de Renal is at bottom. What
short shrift I should make of the vicaire, M. Valenod and all
their jobberies ! How justice would triumph in Verrieres. It
is not their talents which would stop me. They are always
fumbling about."

That day Julien's happiness almost became permanent.
Our hero lacked the power of daring to be sincere. He ought
to have had the courage to have given battle, and on the spot ;
Madame de Renal had been astonished by Julien's phrase,
because the men in her circle kept on repeating that the
return of Robespierre was essentialy possible by reason of those
over-educated young persons of the lower classes. Madame
de Renal's coldness lasted a longish time, and struck Julien
as marked. The reason was that the fear that she had said
something in some way or other disagreeable to him, succeeded
her annoyance for his own breach of taste. This unhappiness
was vividly reflected in those features which looked so pure
and so nave when she was happy and away from intruders.

Julien no longer dared to surrender himself to his dreams.
Growing calmer and less infatuated, he considered that it was
imprudent to go and see Madame de Renal in her room. It
was better for her to come to him. If a servant noticed
her going about the house, a dozen different excuses could
explain it.

xoo THE RED AND THE BLACK

But this arrangement had also its inconveniences. Julien
had received from Fouque some books, which he, as a
theology student would never have dared to ask for in a
bookshop. He only dared to open them at night. He
would often have found it much more convenient not to be
interrupted by a visit, the very waiting for which had even on
the evening before the little scene in the orchard complexly
destroyed his mood for reading.

He had Madame de Renal to thank for understanding books
in quite a new way. He had dared to question her on a
number of little things, the ignorance of which cuts quite short
the intellectual progress of any young man born out of society,
however much natural genius one may choose to ascribe to
him.

This education given through sheer love by a woman who
was extremely ignorant, was a piece of luck. Julien managed
to get a clear insight into society such as it is to-day. His
mind was not bewildered by the narration of what it had
been once, two thousand years ago, or even sixty years ago,
in the time of Voltaire and Louis XV. The scales fell from
his eyes to his inexpressible joy, and he understood at last
what was going on in Verrieres.

In the first place there were the very complicated intrigues
which had been woven for the last two years around the
prefect of Besancon. They were backed up by letters from
Paris, written by the cream of the aristocracy. The scheme
was to make M. de Moirod (he was the most devout man in
the district) the first and not the second deputy of the mayor
of Verrieres.

He had for a competitor a very rich manufacturer whom
it was essential to push back into the place of second deputy.

Julien understood at last the inuendoes which he had
surprised, when the high society of the locality used to come
and dine at M. de Renal's. This privileged society was
deeply concerned with the choice of a first deputy, while the
rest of the town, and above all, the Liberals, did not even
suspect its possibility. The factor which made the matter
important was that, as everybody knows, the east side of the
main street of Verrieres has to be put more than nine feet
back since that street has become a royal route.

Now if M. de Moirod, who had three houses liable to have

THE FIRST DEPUTY 101

their frontage put back, succeeded in becoming first deputy
and consequently mayor in the event of M. de Renal being
elected to the chamber, he would shut his eyes, and it would
be possible to make little imperceptible repairs in the houses
projecting on to the public road, as the result of which they
would last a hundred years. In spite of the great piety and
proved integrity of M. de Moirod, everyone was certain that
he would prove amenable, because he had a great many
children. Among the houses liable to have their frontage
put back nine belonged to the cream of Verrieres society.

In Julien's eyes this intrigue was much more important
than the history of the battle of Fontenoy, whose name he
now came across for the first time in one of the books which
Fouque had sent him. There had been many things which
had astonished Julien since the time five years ago when he
had started going to the cure's in the evening. But discretion
and humility of spirit being the primary qualities of a
theological student, it had always been impossible for him
to put questions.

One day Madame de Renal was giving an order to her
husband's valet who was Julien's enemy.

" But, Madame, to-day is the last Friday in the month,"
the man answered in a rather strange manner.

" Go," said Madame de Renal.

" Well," said Julien, " I suppose he's going to go to that
corn shop which was once a church, and has recently been
restored to religion, but what is he going to do there ? That's
one of the mysteries which I have never been able to fathom."

" It's a very literary institution, but a very curious one,"
answered Madame de Renal. " Women are not admitted to
it. All I know is, that everybody uses the second person
singular. This servant, for instance, will go and meet M.
Valenod there, and the haughty prig will not be a bit offended
at hearing himself addressed by Saint-Jean in that familiar
way, and will answer him in the same way. If you are keen
on knowing what takes place, I will ask M. de Maugiron
and M. Valenod for details. We pay twenty francs for each
servant, to prevent their cutting our throats one fine day.

Time flew. The memory of his mistress's charms distracted
Julien from his black ambition. The necessity of refraining
from mentioning gloomy or intellectual topics since they both

ioa THE RED AND THE BLACK

belonged to opposing parties, added, without his suspecting
it, to the happiness which he owed her, and to the dominion
which she acquired over him.

On the occasions when the presence of the precocious
children reduced them to speaking the language of cold reason,
Julien looking at her with eyes sparkling with love, would
listen with complete docility to her explanations of the world
as it is. Frequently, in the middle of an account of some
cunning piece of jobbery, with reference to a road or a
contract, Madame de Renal's mind would suddenly wander to
the very point of delirium. Julien found it necessary to scold
her. She indulged when with him in the same intimate
gestures which she used with her own children. The fact was
that there were days when she deceived herself that she loved
him like her own child. Had she not repeatedly to answer
his nave questions about a thousand simple things that a
well-born child of fifteen knows quite well ? An instant after-
wards she would admire him like her master. His genius
would even go so far as to frighten her. She thought she
should see more clearly every day the future great man in
this young abbe. She saw him Pope; she saw him first
minister like Richelieu. " Shall I live long enough to see
you in your glory ? " she said to Julien. " There is room for a
great man ; church and state have need of one.'

CHAPTER XVIII

A KING AT VERRIRES

Do you not deserve to be thrown aside like a plebeian
corpse which has no soul and whose blood flows no
longer in its veins.

Sermon oj the Bishop at the Chapel of Saint Clement.

On the 3rd of September at ten o'clock in the evening, a
gendarme woke up the whole of Verrieres by galloping up the
main street. He brought the news that His Majesty the King

of would arrive the following Sunday, and it was already

Tuesday. The prefect authorised, that is to say, demanded
the forming of a guard of honour. They were to exhibit all
possible pomp. An express messenger was sent to Vergy.
M. de Renal arrived during the night and found the town in
a commotion. Each individual had his own pretensions;
those who were less busy hired balconies to see the King.

Who was to command the Guard of Honour? M. de
Renal at once realised how essential it was in the interests of
the houses liable to have their frontage put back that M.
Moirod should have the command. That might entitle him
to the post of first deputy-mayor. There was nothing to say
against the devoutness of M. de Moirod. It brooked no
comparison, but he had never sat on a horse. He was a man
of thirty-six, timid in every way, and equally frightened of
falling and of looking ridiculous. The mayor had summoned
him as early as five o'clock in the morning.

" You see, monsieur, I ask your advice, as though you
already occupy that post to which all the people on the right
side want to carry you. In this unhappy town, manufactures
are prospering, the Liberal party is becoming possessed of
millions, it aspires to power ; it will manage to exploit

104 THE RED AND THE BLACK

everything to its own ends. Let us consult the interests 01
the king, the interest of the monarchy, and above all, the
interest of our holy religion. Who do you think, monsieur,
could be entrusted with the command of the guard of honour ?

In spite of the terrible fear with which horses inspired him,
M. de Moirod finished by accepting this honour like a martyr.
" I shall know how to take the right tone," he said to the
mayor. There was scarcely time enough to get ready the
uniforms which had served seven years ago on the occasion of
the passage of a prince of the blood.

At seven o'clock, Madame de Renal arrived at Vergy with
Julien and the children. She found her drawing room filled
with Liberal ladies who preached the union of all parties and
had come to beg her to urge her husband to grant a place to
theirs in the guard of honour. One of them actually asserted
that if her husband was not chosen he would go bankrupt out
of chagrin. Madame de Renal quickly got rid of all these
people. She seemed very engrossed.

Julien was astonished, and what was more, angry that she
should make a mystery of what was disturbing her, " I had
anticipated it," he said bitterly to himself. " Her love is
being overshadowed by the happiness of receiving a King in
her house. All this hubbub overcomes her. She will love
me once more when the ideas of her caste no longer trouble
her brain."

An astonishing fact, he only loved her the more.

The decorators began to fill the house. He watched a
long time for the opportunity to exchange a few words. He
eventually found her as she was coming out of his own room,
carrying one of his suits. They were alone. He tried to
speak to her. She ran away, refusing to listen to him. " I
am an absolute fool to love a woman like that, whose ambition
renders her as mad as her husband."

She was madder. One of her great wishes which she had
never confessed to Julien for fear of shocking him, was to see
him leave off, if only for one day, his gloomy black suit. With
an adroitness which was truly admirable in so ingenuous a
woman, she secured first from M. de Moirod, and subsequently,
from M. the sub-perfect de Maugiron, an assurance that Julien
should be nominated a guard of honour in preference to five
or six young people, the sons of very well-off manufacturers,

A KING AT VERRIERES 105

of whom two at least, were models of piety. M. de Valenod,
who reckoned on lending his carriage to the prettiest women
in the town, and on showing off his fine Norman steeds,
consented to let Julien (the being he hated most in the whole
world) have one of his horses. But all the guards of honour,
either possessed or had borrowed, one of those pretty sky-blue
uniforms, with two silver colonel epaulettes, which had shone
seven years ago. Madame de Renal wanted a new uniform,
and she only had four days in which to send to Besancon and
get from there the uniform, the arms, the hat, etc., everything
necessary for a Guard of Honour. The most delightful part
of it was that she thought it imprudent to get Julien's uniform
made at Verrieres. She wanted to surprise both him and the
town.

Having settled the questions of the guards of honour, and
of the public welcome finished, the mayor had now to organise

a great religious ceremony. The King of did not

wish to pass through Verrieres without visiting the famous relic
of St. Clement, which is kept at Bray-le-Haut' barely a league
from the town. The authorities wanted to have a numerous
attendance of the clergy, but this matter was the most difficult
to arrange. M. Maslon, the new cure, wanted to avoid at
any price the presence of M. Chelan. It was in vain that
M. de Renal tried to represent to him that it would be
imprudent to do so. M. the Marquis de La Mole whose
ancestors had been governors of the province for so many
generations, had been chosen to accompany the King of

He had known the abbe Chelan for thirty years.

He would certainly ask news of him when he arrived at
Verrieres, and if he found him disgraced he was the very man
to go and route him out in the little house to which he had
retired, accompanied by all the escort that he had at his dis-
position. What a rebuff that would be ?

" I shall be disgraced both here and at Besancon," answered
the abbe Maslon if he appears among my clergy. A Jansenist,
by the Lord."

" Whatever you can say, my dear abbe, replied M. de
Renal, I'll never expose the administration of Verrieres to
receiving such an affront from M. de la Mole. You do not
know him. He is orthodox enough at Court, but here in the
provinces, he is a satirical wit and cynic, whose only object is

106 THE RED AND THE BLACK

to make people uncomfortable. He is capable of covering us
with ridicule in the eyes of the Liberals, simply in order to
amuse himself.

It was only on the night between the Saturday and the
Sunday, after three whole days of negotiations that the pride
of the abbe Maslon bent before the fear of the mayor, which
was now changing into courage. It was necessary to write a
honeyed letter to the abbe Chelan, begging him to be present
at the ceremony in connection with the relic of Bray-le-Haut,
if of course, his great age and his infirmity allowed him to do
so. M. Chelan asked for and obtained a letter of invitation
for Julien, who was to accompany him as his sub-deacon.

From the beginning of the Sunday morning, thousands of
peasants began to arrive from the neighbouring mountains, and
to inundate the streets of Verrieres. It was the finest sun-
shine. Finally, about three o'clock, a thrill swept through all
this crowd. A great fire had been perceived on a rock two
leagues from Verrieres. This signal announced that the king
had just entered the territory of the department. At the same
time, the sound of all the bells and the repeated volleys from
an old Spanish cannon which belonged to the town, testified
to its joy at this great event. Half the population climbed on
to the roofs. All the women were on the balconies. The
guard of honour started to march, The brilliant uniforms
were universally admired ; everybody recognised a relative or a
friend. They made fun of the timidity of M. de Moirod,
whose prudent hand was ready every single minute to catch
hold of his saddle-bow. But one remark resulted in all the
others being forgotten ; the first cavalier in the ninth line was
a very pretty, slim boy, who was not recognised at first. He
soon created a general sensation, as some uttered a cry of
indignation, and others were dumbfounded with astonishment.
They recognised in this young man, who was sitting one of
the Norman horses of M. Valenod, little Sorel, the carpenter's
son. There was a unanimous out-cry against the mayor, above
all on the part of the Liberals. What, because this little
labourer, who masqueraded as an abbe, was tutor to his brats,
he had the audacity to nominate him guard of honour to the
prejudice of rich manufacturers like so-and-so and so and so !
" Those gentlemen," said a banker's wife, " ought to put that
insolent gutter-boy in his proper place."

A KING AT VERRIERES 107

" He is cunning and carries a sabre," answered her neighbour.
" He would be dastardly enough to slash them in the face."

The conversation of aristocratic society was more dangerous.
The ladies began to ask each other if the mayor alone was
responsible for this grave impropriety. Speaking generally,
they did justice to his contempt for lack of birth.

Julien was the happiest of men, while he was the subject of
so much conversation. Bold by nature, he sat a horse better
than the majority of the young men of this mountain town.
He saw that, in the eyes of the women, he was the topic of
interest.

His epaulettes were more brilliant than those of the others,
because they were new. His horse pranced at every moment.
He reached the zenith of joy.

His happiness was unbounded when, as they passed by the
old rampart, the noise of the little cannon made his horse
prance outside the line. By a great piece of luck he did not
fall ; from that moment he felt himself a hero. He was one
of Napoleon's officers of artillery, and was charging a battery.

One person was happier than he. She had first seen him
pass from one of the folding windows in the Htel deVille.
Then taking her carriage and rapidly making a long dtour,
she arrived in time to shudder when his horse took him out-
side the line. Finally she put her carriage to the gallop, left
by another gate of the town, succeeded in rejoining the route
by which the King was to pass, and was able to follow the
Guard of Honour at twenty paces distance in the midst of a
noble dust. Six thousand peasants cried " Long live the
King," when the mayor had the honour to harangue his
Majesty. An hour afterwards, when all the speeches had been
listened to, and the King was going to enter the town, the
little cannon began again to discharge its spasmodic volleys.
But an accident ensued, the victim being, not one of the
cannoneers who had proved their mettle at Leipsic and at
Montreuil, but the future deputy-mayor, M. de Moirod. His
horse gently laid him in the one heap of mud on the high
road, a somewhat scandalous circumstance, inasmuch as it
was necessary to extricate him to allow the King to pass.
His Majesty alighted at the fine new church, which was
decked out to-day with all its crimson curtains. The King
was due to dine, and then afterwards take his carriage again

108 THE RED AND THE BLACK

and go and pay his respects to the celebrated relic of Saint
Clement. Scarcely was the King in the church than Julien
galloped towards the house of M. de Renal. Once there he
doffed with a sigh his fine sky-blue uniform, his sabre and his
epaulettes, to put on again his shabby little black suit. He
mounted his horse again, and in a few moments was at
Bray-le-Haut, which was on the summit of a very pretty hill.
"Enthusiasm is responsible for these numbers of peasants,"
thought Julien. It was impossible to move a step at Verrieres,
and here there were more than ten thousand round this
ancient abbey. Half ruined by the vandalism of the Revolu-
tion, it had been magnificently restored since the Restoration,
and people were already beginning to talk of miracles. Julien
rejoined the abbe Chelan, who scolded him roundly and
gave him a cassock and a surplice. He dressed quickly and
followed M. Chelan, who was going to pay a call on the
young bishop of Agde. He was a nephew of M. de la Mole,
who had been recently nominated, and had been charged with
the duty of showing the relic to the King. But the bishop
was not to be found.

The clergy began to get impatient. It was awaiting its
chief in the sombre Gothic cloister of the ancient abbey.
Twenty-four cures had been brought together so as to repre-
sent the ancient chapter of Bray-le-Haut, which before 1789
consisted of twenty-four canons. The cures, having deplored
the bishop's youth for three-quarters of an hour, thought it
fitting for their senior to visit Monseigneur to apprise him that
the King was on the point of arriving, and that it was time to
betake himself to the choir. The great age of M. Chelan
gave him the seniority. In spite of the bad temper which
he was manifesting to Julien, he signed him to follow. Julien
was wearing his surplice with distinction. By means of some
trick or other of ecclesiastical dress, he had made his fine curling
hair very flat, but by a forgetfulness, which redoubled the
anger of M. Chelan, the spurs of the Guard of Honour could
be seen below the long folds of his cassock.

When they arrived at the bishop's apartment, the tall
lackeys with their lace-frills scarcely deigned to answer the
old cure to the effect that Monseigneur was not receiving.
They made fun of him when he tried to explain that in his
capacity of senior member of the chapter of Bray-le-Haut, he

A KING AT VERRIERES 109

had the privilege of being admitted at any time to the officiat-
ing bishop.

Julien's haughty temper was shocked by the lackeys'
insolence. He started to traverse the corridors of the ancient
abbey, and to shake all the doors which he found. A very
small one yielded to his efforts, and he found himself in a
cell in the midst of Monseigneur's valets, who were dressed in
black suits with chains on their necks. His hurried manner
made these gentlemen think that he had been sent by the
bishop, and they let him pass. He went some steps further
on, and found himself in an immense Gothic hall, which was
extremely dark, and completely wainscotted in black oak.
The ogive windows had all been walled in with brick
except one. There was nothing to disguise the coarseness of
this masonry, which offered a melancholy contrast to the
ancient magnificence of the woodwork. The two great sides
of this hall, so celebrated among Burgundian antiquaries, and
built by the Duke, Charles the Bold, about 1470 in expiation
of some sin, were adorned with richly sculptured wooden
stalls. All the mysteries of the Apocalypse were to be seen
portrayed in wood of different colours.

This melancholy magnificence, debased as it was by the
sight of the bare bricks and the plaster (which was still quite
white) affected Julien. He stopped in silence. He saw at
the other extremity of the hall, near the one window which let
in the daylight, a movable mahogany mirror. A young man
in a violet robe and a lace surplice, but with his head bare,
was standing still three paces from the glass. This piece of
furniture seemed strange in a place like this, and had doubt-
less been only brought there on the previous day. Julien
thought that the young man had the appearance of being
irritated. He was solemnly giving benedictions with his right
hand close to the mirror.

"What can this mean," he thought. "Is this young priest
performing some preliminary ceremony? Perhaps he is the
bishop's secretary. He will be as insolent as the lackeys.
Never mind though ! Let us try." He advanced and
traversed somewhat slowly the length of the hall, with his
gaze fixed all the time on the one window, and looking at the
young man who continued without any intermission bestowing
slowly an infinite number of blessings.

no THE RED AND THE BLACK

The nearer he approached the better he could distinguish
his angry manner. The richness of the lace surplice stopped
Julien in spite of himself some paces in front of the mirror.
" It is my duty to speak," he said to himself at last. But the
beauty of the hall had moved him, and he was already upset
by the harsh words he anticipated.

The young man saw him in the mirror, turned round, and
suddenly discarding his angry manner, said to him in the
gentlest tone,

" Well, Monsieur, has it been arranged at last ? "

Julien was dumbfounded. As the young man began to
turn towards him, Julien saw the pectoral cross on his breast,
It was the bishop of Agde. "As young as that," thought
Julien. " At most six or eight years older than I am ! "

He was ashamed of his spurs.'

" Monseigneur," he said at last, " I am sent by M. Chelan,
the senior of the chapter."

" Ah, he has been well recommended to me," said the
bishop in a polished tone which doubled Julien's delight,
" But I beg your pardon, Monsieur, I mistook you for the person
who was to bring me my mitre. It was badly packed at Paris.
The silver cloth towards the top has been terribly spoiled.
It will look awful," ended the young bishop sadly, " And
besides, I am being kept waiting."

" Monseigneur, I will go and fetch the mitre if your grace will
let me."

Julien's fine eyes did their work.

" Go, Monsieur," answered the bishop, with charming polite-
ness. " I need it immediately. I am grieved to keep the
gentlemen of the chapter waiting."

When Julien reached the centre of the hall, he turned
round towards the bishop, and saw that he had again com-
menced giving benedictions.

" What can it be ? " Julien asked himself. " No doubt it
is a necessary ecclesiastical preliminary for the ceremony which
is to take place." When he reached the cell in which the
valets were congregated, he saw the mitre in their hands.
These gentlemen succumbed in spite of themselves to his
imperious look, and gave him Monseigneur's mitre.

He felt proud to carry it. As he crossed the hall he walked
slowly. He held it with reverence. He found the bishop

A KING AT VERRIERES in

seated before the glass, but from time to time, his right hand,
although fatigued, still gave a blessing. Julien helped him to
adjust his mitre. The bishop shook his head.

" Ah ! it will keep on," he said to Julien with an air of
satisfaction. " Do you mind going a little way off? "

Then the bishop went very quickly to the centre of the
room, then approached the mirror, again resumed his angry
manner, and gravely began to give blessings.

Julien was motionless with astonishment. He was tempted
to understand, but did not dare. The bishop stopped, and
suddenly abandoning his grave manner looked at him and
said :

" What do you think of my mitre, monsieur, is it on right ? "

" Quite right, Monseigneur."

" It is not too far back ? That would look a little silly, but
I musn't on the other hand wear it down over the eyes like an
officer's shako."

" It seems to me to be on quite right."

"The King of is accustomed to a venerable clergy

who are doubtless very solemn. I should not like to appear
lacking in dignity, especially by reason of my youth."

And the bishop started again to walk about and give
benedictions.

" It is quite clear," said Julien, daring to understand at last,
" He is practising giving his benediction."

" I am ready," the bishop said after a few moments. " Go,
Monsieur, and advise the senior and the gentlemen of the
chapter."

Soon M. Chelan, followed by the two oldest cures, entered
by a big magnificently sculptured door, which Julien had not
previously noticed. But this time he remained in his place
quite at the back, and was only able to see the bishop over the
shoulders of ecclesiastics who were pressing at the door in crowds.

The bishop began slowly to traverse the hall. When he
reached the threshold, the cures formed themselves into a
procession. After a short moment of confusion, the procession
began to march intoning the psalm. The bishop, who was
between M. Chelan and a very old cure, was the last to
advance. Julien being in attendance on the abbe Chelan
managed to get quite near Monseigneur. They followed the
long corridors of the abbey of Bray-le-Haut. In spite of the

ii2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

brilliant sun they were dark and damp. They arrived finally
at the portico of the cloister. Julien was dumbfounded with
admiration for so fine a ceremony. His emotions were divided
between thoughts of his own ambition which had been re-
awakened by the bishop's youth and thoughts of the latter's
refinement and exquisite politeness. This politeness was quite
different to that of M. de Renal, even on his good days. " The
higher you lift yourself towards the first rank of society," said
Julien to himself, "the more charming manners you find."

They entered the church by a side door; suddenly an awful
noise made the ancient walls echo. Julien thought they were
going to crumble. It was the little piece of artillery again.
It had been drawn at a gallop by eight horses and had just
arrived. Immediately on its arrival it had been run out by
the Leipsic cannoneers and fired five shots a minute as though
the Prussians had been the target.

But this admirable noise no longer produced any effect on
Julien. He no longer thought of Napoleon and military glory.
" To be bishop of Agde so young," he thought. " But where is
Agde ? How much does it bring in ? Two or three hundred
thousand francs, perhaps."

Monseigneur's lackeys appeared with a magnificent canopy.
M. Chelan took one of the poles, but as a matter of fact it
was Julien who carried it. The bishop took his place under-
neath. He had really succeeded in looking old; and our
hero's admiration was now quite unbounded. "What can't
one accomplish with skill," he thought.

The king entered. Julien had the good fortune to see him
at close quarters. The bishop began to harangue him with
unction, without forgetting a little nuance of very polite
anxiety for his Majesty. We will not repeat a description of
the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. They filled all the columns of
the journals of the department for a fortnight on end. Julien
learnt from the bishop that the king was descended from
Charles the Bold.

At a later date, it was one of Julien's duties to check the
accounts of the cost of this ceremony. M. de la Mole, who
had succeeded in procuring a bishopric for his nephew, had
wished to do him the favour of being himself responsible for
all the expenses. The ceremony alone of Bray-le-Haute cost
three thousand eight hundred francs.

A KING AT VERRIERES 113

After the speech of the bishop, and the answer of the king,
his Majesty took up a position underneath the canopy, and
then knelt very devoutly on a cushion near the altar. The
choir was surrounded by stalls, and the stalls were raised two
steps from the pavement. It was at the bottom of these steps
that Julien sat at the feet of M. de Chelan almost like a
train-bearer sitting next to his cardinal in the Sixtine chapel
at Rome. There was a Te Deum, floods of incense, in-
numerable volleys of musketry and artillery ; the peasants were
drunk with happiness and piety. A day like this undoes the
work of a hundred numbers of the Jacobin papers.

Julien was six paces from the king, who was really praying
with devotion. He noticed for the first time a little man with
a witty expression, who wore an almost plain suit. But he
had a sky-blue ribbon over this very simple suit. He was
nearer the king than many other lords, whose clothes were
embroidered with gold to such an extent that, to use Julien's
expression, it was impossible to see the cloth. He learnt some
minutes later that it was Monsieur de la Mole. He thought
he looked haughty, and even insolent.

" I'm sure this marquis is not so polite as my pretty bishop,"
he thought. " Ah, the ecclesiastical calling makes men mild
and good. But the king has come to venerate the relic, and
I don't see a trace of the relic. Where has Saint Clement
got to ? "

A little priest who sat next to him informed him that the
venerable relic was at the top of the building in a chapelle
ardente.

"What is a chapelle ardente" said Julien to himself.

But he was reluctant to ask the meaning of this word. He
redoubled his attention.

The etiquette on the occasion of a visit of a sovereign
prince is that the canons do not accompany the bishop.
But, as he started on his march to the cliapelle ardente, my
lord bishop of Agde called the abbe Chelan. Julien dared to
follow him. Having climbed up a long staircase, they reached
an extremely small door whose Gothic frame was magnificently
gilded. This work looked as though it had been constructed
the day before.

Twenty-four young girls belonging to the most distinguished
families in Verrieres were assembled in front of the door. The

8

ii4 THE RED AND THE BLACK

bishop knelt down in the midst of these pretty maidens before
he opened the door. While he was praying aloud, they
seemed unable to exhaust their admiration for his fine lace,
his gracious mien, and his young and gentle face. This
spectacle deprived our hero of his last remnants of reason.
At this moment he would have fought for the Inquisition, and
with a good conscience. The door suddenly opened. The
little chapel was blazing with light. More than a thousand
candles could be seen before the altar, divided into eight lines
and separated from each other by bouquets of flowers. The
suave odour of the purest incense eddied out from the door of
the sanctuary. The chapel, which had been newly gilded, was
extremely small but very high. Julien noticed that there were
candles more than fifteen feet high upon the altar. The
young girls could not restrain a cry of admiration. Only the
twenty-four young girls, the two cures and Julien had been
admitted into the little vestibule of the chapel. Soon the
king arrived, followed by Monsieur de la Mole and his great
Chamberlain. The guards themselves remained outside
kneeling and presenting arms.

His Majesty precipitated, rather than threw himself, on to
the stool. It was only then that Julien, who was keeping
close to the gilded door, perceived over the bare arm of a
young girl, the charming statue of St. Clement. It was
hidden under the altar, and bore the dress of a young Roman
soldier. It had a large wound on its neck, from which the
blood seemed to flow. The artist had surpassed himself.
The eyes, which though dying were full of grace, were half
closed. A budding moustache adored that charming mouth
which, though half closed, seemed notwithstanding to be
praying. The young girl next to Julien wept warm tears at
the sight. One of her tears fell on Julien's hand.

After a moment of prayer in the profoundest silence, that
was only broken by the distant sound of the bells of all the
villages within a radius of ten leagues, the bishop of Agde
asked the king's permission to speak. He finished a short
but very touching speech with a passage, the very simplicity
of which assured its effectiveness :

" Never forget, young Christian women, that you have seen
one of the greatest kings of the world on his knees before the
servants of this Almighty and terrible God. These servants,

A KING AT VERRIERES 115

feeble, persecuted, assassinated as they were on earth, as you
can see by the still bleeding wounds of Saint Clement, will
triumph in Heaven. You will remember them, my young
Christian women, will you not, this day for ever, and will
detest the infidel. You will be for ever faithful to this God
who is so great, so terrible, but so good ? "

With these words the bishop rose authoritatively.

" You promise me ? " he said, lifting up his arm with an
inspired air.

" We promise," said the young girls melting into tears.

" I accept your promise in the name of the terrible God,"
added the bishop in a thunderous voice, and the ceremony
was at an end.

The king himself was crying. It was only a long time
afterwards that Julien had sufficient self-possession to enquire
" where were the bones of the Saint that had been sent from
Rome to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy ? " He was
told that they were hidden in the charming waxen figure.

His Majesty deigned to allow the young ladies who had
accompanied him into the chapel to wear a red ribbon on
which were embroidered these words, "HATE OF THE
INFIDEL. PERPETUAL ADORATION."

Monsieur de la Mole had ten thousand bottles of wine
distributed among the peasants. In the evening at Verrieres,
the Liberals made a point of having illuminations which were
a hundred times better than those of the Royalists. Before
leaving, the king paid a visit to M. de Moirod.

CHAPTER XIX

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING

The grotesqness of every-day events conceals the real
unhappiness of the passions. Barnave.

As he was replacing the usual furniture in the room which M.
de la Mole had occupied, Julien found a piece of very strong
paper folded in four. He read at the bottom of the first page
" To His Excellency M. le Marquis de la Mole, peer of France,
Chevalier of the Orders of the King, etc. etc." It was a
petition in the rough hand-writing of a cook.

" Monsieur le Marquis, I have had religious principles all my
life. I was in Lyons exposed to the bombs at the time of the
siege, in '93 of execrable memory. I communicate, I go to
Mass every Sunday in the parochial church. I have never
missed the paschal duty, even in '93 of execrable memory.
My cook used to keep servants before the revolution, my
cook fasts on Fridays. I am universally respected in Verrieres,
and I venture to say I deserve to be so. I walk under the
canopy in the processions at the side of the cure and of the
mayor. On great occasions I carry a big candle, bought at
my own expense.

ask Monsieur the marquis for the lottery appointment of
Verrieres, which in one way or another is bound to be vacant
shortly as the beneficiary is very ill, and moreover votes on
the wrong side at elections, etc. " De Cholin."

In the margin of this petition was a recommendation signed
" de Moirod " which began with this line, " I have had the
honour, the worthy person who makes this request "

" So even that imbecile de Cholin shows me the way to go
about things," said Julien to himself,

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING 117

Eight days after the passage of the King of through

Verrieres, the one question which predominated over the
innumerable falsehoods, foolish conjectures, and ridiculous dis-
cussions, etc., etc., which had had successively for their object
the king, the Marquis de la Mole, the ten thousand bottles of
wine, the fall of poor de Moirod, who, hoping to win a cross,
only left his room a week after his fall, was the absolute in-
decency of having foisted Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son, into
the Guard of Honour. You should have heard on this point
the rich manufacturers of printed calico, the very persons who
used to bawl themselves hoarse in preaching equality, morning
and evening in the cafe. That haughty woman, Madame de
Renal, was of course responsible for this abomination. The
reason ? The fine eyes and fresh complexion of the little
abbe Sorel explained everything else.

A short time after their return to Vergy, Stanislas, the
youngest of the children, caught the fever; Madame de
Renal was suddenly attacked by an awful remorse. For the
first time she reproached herself for her love with some logic.
She seemed to understand as though by a miracle the enormity
of the sin into which she had let herself be swept. Up to
that moment, although deeply religious, she had never thought
of the greatness of her crime in the eyes of God.

In former times she had loved God passionately in the
Convent of the Sacred Heart; in the present circumstances,
she feared him with equal intensity. The struggles which
lacerated her soul were all the more awful in that her fear
was quite irrational. Julien found that the least argument
irritated instead of soothing her. She saw in the illness the
language of hell. Moreover, Julien was himself very fond of
the little Stanislas.

It soon assumed a serious character. Then incessant re-
morse deprived Madame de Renal of even her power of sleep.
She ensconced herself in a gloomy silence : if she had opened
her mouth, it would only have been to confess her crime to
God and mankind.

" I urge you," said Julien to her, as soon as they got alone,
" not to speak to anyone. Let me be the sole confidant of
your sufferings. If you still love me, do not speak. Your
words will not be able to take away our Stanislas' fever." But
his consolations produced no effect. He did not know that

n8 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Madame de Renal had got it into her head that, in order to
appease the wrath of a jealous God, it was necessary either to
hate Julien, or let her son die. It was because she felt she
could not hate her lover that she was so unhappy.

" Fly from me," she said one day to Julien. " In the name
of God leave this house. It is your presence here which kills
my son. God punishes me," she added in a low voice. " He
is just. I admire his fairness. My crime is awful, and I
was living without remorse," she exclaimed. "That was
the first sign of my desertion of God : I ought to be doubly
punished."

Julien was profoundly touched. He could see in this
neither hypocrisy nor exaggeration. " She thinks that she
is killing her son by loving me, and all the same the unhappy
woman loves me more than her son. I cannot doubt it.
It is remorse for that which is killing her. Those sentiments
of hers have real greatness. But how could I have inspired
such a love, I who am so poor, so badly-educated, so ignorant,
and sometimes so coarse in my manners ? "

One night the child was extremely ill. At about two
o'clock in the morning, M. de Renal came to see it. The child
consumed by fever, and extremely flushed, could not recognise
its father. Suddenly Madame de Renal threw herself at her
husband's feet; Julien saw that she was going to confess
everything and ruin herself for ever.

Fortunately this extraordinary proceeding annoyed M. de
Renal.

" Adieu ! Adieu ! " he said, going away.

" No, listen to me," cried his wife on her knees before him,
trying to hold him back. " Hear the whole truth. It is I
who am killing my son. I gave him life, and I am taking it
back. Heaven is punishing me. In the eyes of God I am
guilty of murder. It is necessary that I should ruin and
humiliate myself. Perhaps that sacrifice will appease the
the Lord."

If M. de Renal had been a man of any imagination, he
would then have realized everything.

" Romantic nonsense," he cried, moving his wife away as
she tried to embrace his knees. " All that is romantic
nonsense ! Julien, go and fetch the doctor at daybreak,"
and he went back to bed. Madame de Renal fell on her

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING 119

knees half-fainting, repelling Julien's help with a hysterical
gesture.

Julien was astonished.

" So this is what adultery is," he said to himself. " Is it
possible that those scoundrels of priests should be right, that
they who commit so many sins themselves should have the
privilege of knowing the true theory of sin ? How droll ! "

For twenty minutes after M. de Renal had gone back to
bed, Julien saw the woman he loved with her head resting on
her son's little bed, motionless, and almost unconscious.
" There," he said to himself, " is a woman of superior
temperament brought to the depths of unhappiness simply
because she has known me."

" Time moves quickly. What can I do for her ? I must
make up my mind. I have not got simply myself to consider
now. What do I care for men and their buffooneries ? What
can I do for her ? Leave her ? But I should be leaving her
alone and a prey to the most awful grief. That automaton of
a husband is more harm to her than good. He is so coarse
that he is bound to speak harshly to her. She may go mad
and throw herself out of the window."

" If I leave her, if I cease to watch over her, she will confess
everything, and who knows, in spite of the legacy which she
is bound to bring him, he will create a scandal. She may
confess everything (great God) to that scoundrel of an abbe
who makes the illness of a child of six an excuse for not
budging from this house, and not without a purpose either.
In her grief and her fear of God, she forgets all she knows
of the man ; she only sees the priest."

"Go away," said Madame de Renal suddenly to him,
opening her eyes.

" I would give my life a thousand times to know what
could be of most use to you," answered Julien. " I have
never loved you so much, my dear angel, or rather it is only
from this last moment that I begin to adore you as you
deserve to be adored. What would become of me far from
you, and with the consciousness that you are unhappy owing
to what I have done ? But don't let my suffering come into
the matter. I will go yes, my love ! But if I leave you,
dear ; if I cease to watch over you, to be incessantly between
you and your husband, you will tell him everything. You

i2o THE RED AND THE BLACK

will ruin yourself. Remember that he will hound you out of his
house in disgrace. Besancon will talk of the scandal. You
will be said to be absolutely in the wrong. You will never
lift up your head again after that shame."

" That's what I ask," she cried, standing up. " I shall
suffer, so much the better."

" But you will also make him unhappy through that awful
scandal."

" But I shall be humiliating myself, throwing myself into
the mire, and by those means, perhaps, I shall save my son.
Such a humiliation in the eyes of all is perhaps to be regarded
as a public penitence. So far as my weak judgment goes, is
it not the greatest sacrifice that I can make to God ? perhaps
He will deign to accept my humiliation, and to leave me my
son. Show me another sacrifice which is more painful and I
will rush to it."

" Let me punish myself. I too am guilty. Do you wish
me to retire to the Trappist Monastery ? The austerity of that
life may appease your God. Oh, heaven, why cannot I take
Stanislas's illness upon myself? "

" Ah, do you love him then," said Madame de Renal, getting
up and throwing herself in his arms.

At the same time she repelled him with horror.

" I believe you ! I believe you ! Oh, my one friend," she
cried falling on her knees again. " Why are you not the
father of Stanislas ? In that case it would not be a terrible sin
to love you more than your son."

" Won't you allow me to stay and love you henceforth like a
brother ? It is the only rational atonement. It may appease
the wrath of the Most High."

" Am I," she cried, getting up and taking Julien's head
between her two hands, and holding it some distance from her.
" Am I to love you as if you were a brother ? Is it in my
power to love you like that ? " Julien melted into tears.

" I will obey you," he said, falling at her feet. I will obey
you in whatever you order me. That is all there is left for
me to do. My mind is struck with blindness. I do not see
any course to take. If I leave you you will tell your husband
everything. You will ruin yourself and him as well. He will
never be nominated deputy after incurring such ridicule. If I
stay, you will think I am the cause of your son's death, and

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING 121

you will die of grief. Do you wish to try the effect of my
departure. If you wish, I will punish myself for our sin by
leaving you for eight days. I will pass them in any retreat
you like. In the abbey of Bray-le-Haut, for instance. But
swear that you will say nothing to your husband during my
absence. Remember that if you speak I shall never be able
to come back."

She promised and he left, but was called back at the end of
two days.

" It is impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I
shall speak to my husband if you are not constantly there to
enjoin me to silence by your looks. Every hour of this
abominable life seems to last a day."

Finally heaven had pity on this unfortunate mother. Little
by little Stanislas got out of danger. But the ice was broken.
Her reason had realised the extent of her sin. She could not
recover her equilibrium again. Her pangs of remorse re-
mained, and were what they ought to have been in so sincere
a heart. Her life was heaven and hell : hell when she did
not see Julien ; heaven when she was at his feet.

" I do not deceive myself any more," she would say to him,
even during the moments when she dared to surrender herself
to his full love. " I am damned, irrevocably damned. You
are young, heaven may forgive you, but I, I am damned.
I know it by a certain sign. I am afraid, who would not be
afraid at the sight of hell ? but at the bottom of my heart I
do not repent at all. I would commit my sin over again if I
had the opportunity. If heaven will only forbear to punish
me in this world and through my children, I shall have more
than I deserve. But you, at any rate, my Julien," she would
cry at other moments, "are you happy? Do you think I love
you enough ? "

The suspiciousness and morbid pride of Julien, who needed,
above all, a self-sacrificing love, altogether vanished when he
saw at every hour of the day so great and indisputable a
sacrifice. He adored Madame de Renal. " It makes no
difference her being noble, and my being a labourer's son.
She loves me .... she does not regard me as a valet charged
with the functions of a lovei." That fear once dismissed,
Julien fell into all the madness of love, into all its deadly
uncertainties.

122 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" At any rate," she would cry, seeing his doubts of her love,
" let me feel quite happy during the three days we still have
together. Let us make haste ; perhaps to-morrow will be too
late. If heaven strikes me through my children, it will be in
vain that I shall try only to live to love you, and to be blind
to the fact that it is my crime which has killed them. I could
not survive that blow. Even if I wished I could not ; I should
go mad."

"Ah, if only I could take your sin on myself as you so
generously offered to take Stanislas' burning fever ! "

This great moral crisis changed the character of the senti-
ment which united Julien and his mistress. His love was no
longer simply admiration for her beauty, and the pride of
possessing her.

Henceforth their happiness was of a quite superior character.
The flame which consumed them was more intense. They
had transports filled with madness. Judged by the worldly
standard their happiness would have appeared intensified.
But they no longer found that delicious serenity, that cloudless
happiness, that facile joy of the first period of their love, when
Madame de Renal's only fear was that Julien did not love her
enough. Their happiness had at times the complexion of
crime.

In their happiest and apparently their most tranquil
moments, Madame de Renal would suddenly cry out, " Oh,
great God, I see hell," as she pressed Julien's hand with a
convulsive grasp. " What horrible tortures ! I have well
deserved them." She grasped him and hung on to him like
ivy onto a wall.

Julien would try in vain to calm that agitated soul. She
would take his hand, cover it with kisses. Then, relapsing
into a gloomy reverie, she would say, " Hell itself would be a
blessing for me. I should still have some days to pass with
him on this earth, but hell on earth, the death of my children.
Still, perhaps my crime will be forgiven me at that price. Oh,
great God, do not grant me my pardon at so great a price.
These poor children have in no way transgressed against You.
I, I am the only culprit. I love a man who is not my
husband."

Julien subsequently saw Madame de Renal attain what were
apparently moments of tranquillity. She was endeavouring

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING 123

to control herself; she did not wish to poison the life of the
man she loved. They found the days pass with the rapidity
of lightning amid these alternating moods of love, remorse,
and voluptuousness. Julien lost the habit of reflecting.

Mademoiselle Elisa went to attend to a little lawsuit which
she had at Verrieres. She found Valenod very piqued against
Julien. She hated the tutor and would often speak about
him.

" You will ruin me, Monsieur, if I tell the truth," she said
one day to Valenod. "All masters have an understanding
amongst themselves with regard to matters of importance. There
are certain disclosures which poor servants are never forgiven."

After these stereotyped phrases, which his curiosity
managed to cut short, Monsieur Valenod received some in-
formation extremely mortifying to his self-conceit.

This woman, who was the most distinguished in the district,
the woman on whom he had lavished so much attention in
the last six years, and made no secret of it, more was the pity,
this woman who was so proud, whose disdain had put him to
the blush times without number, had just taken for her lover
a little workman masquerading as a tutor. And to fill the
cup of his jealousy, Madame de Renal adored that lover.

" And," added the housemaid with a sigh, " Julien did not
put himself out at all to make his conquest, his manner was
as cold as ever, even with Madame."

Elisa had only become certain in the country, but she
believed that this intrigue dated from much further back.
"That is no doubt the reason," she added spitefully, "why he
refused to marry me. And to think what a fool I was when I
went to consult Madame de Renal and begged her to speak
to the tutor."

The very same evening, M. de Renal received from the
town, together with his paper, a long anonymous letter which
apprised him in the greatest detail of what was taking place
in his house. Julien saw him pale as he read this letter
written on blue paper, and look at him with a malicious ex-
pression. During all that evening the mayor failed to throw
off his trouble. It was in vain that Julien paid him court by
asking for explanations about the genealogy of the best
families in Burgundy.

CHAPTER XX

ANONYMOUS LETTERS

Do not give dalli ance

Too much the rein ; the strongest oaths are straw

To the fire i' the blood. Tempest.

As they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien had time
to say to his love,

" Don't let us see each other to-night. Your husband has
suspicions. I would swear that that big letter he read with a
sigh was an anonymous letter."

Fortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame
de Renal had the mad idea that this warning was only a pre-
text for not seeing her. She absolutely lost her head, and
came to his door at the accustomed hour. Julien, who had
heard the noise in the corridor, immediately blew out his
lamp. Someone was trying to open the door. Was it
Madame de Renal ? Was it a jealous husband ?

Very early next morning the cook, who liked Julien, brought
him a book, on the cover of which he read these words written
in Italian : Guardate alia pagina 130.

Julien shuddered at the imprudence, looked for page 130,
and found pinned to it the following letter hastily written,
bathed with tears, and full of spelling mistakes. Madame
de Renal was usually very correct. He was touched by this
circumstance, and somewhat forgot the awfulness of the
indiscretion.

" So you did not want to receive me to-night ? There are
moments when I think that I have never read down to the
depths of your soul. Your looks frighten me. I am afraid of
you. Great God ! perhaps you have never loved me ? In

ANNONYMOUS LETTERS 125

that case let my husband discover my love, and shut me up
in a prison in the country far away from my children. Perhaps
God wills it so. I shall die soon, but you will have proved
yourself a monster.

" Do you not love me ? Are you tired of my fits of folly
and of remorse, you wicked man ? Do you wish to ruin me ?
I will show you an easy way. Go and show this letter to all
Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod. Tell him that I
love you, nay, do not utter such a blasphemy, tell him I adore
you, that it was only on the day I saw you that my life
commenced; that even in the maddest moments of my youth
I never even dreamt of the happiness that I owe to you, that
I have sacrificed my life to you and that I am sacrificing my
soul. You know that I am sacrificing much more. But does
that man know the meaning of sacrifice? Tell him, I say,
simply to irritate him, that 1 will defy all evil tongues, that the
only misfortune for me in the whole world would be to witness
any change in the only man who holds me to life. What a
happiness it would be to me to lose my life, to offer it
up as a sacrifice and to have no longer any fear for my
children.

" Have no doubt about it, dear one, if it is an anonymous
letter, it comes from that odious being who has persecuted me
for the last six years with his loud voice, his stories about his
jumps on horseback, his fatuity, and the never ending catalogue
of all his advantages.

" Is there an anonymous letter ? I should like to discuss
that question with you, you wicked man; but no, you acted
rightly. Clasping you in my arms perhaps for the last time,
I should never have been able to argue as coldly as I do,
now that I am alone. From this moment our happiness
will no longer be so easy. Will that be a vexation for you ?
Yes, on those days when you haven't received some amusing
book from M. Fouque. The sacrifice is made; to-morrow,
whether there is or whether there is not any anonymous letter,
I myself will tell my husband I have received an anonymous
letter and that it is necessary to give you a golden bridge at
once, find some honourable excuse, and send you back to
your parents without delay.

" Alas, dear one, we are going to be separated for a fortnight,
perhaps a month ! Go, I will do you justice, you will suffer

126 THE RED AND THE BLACK

as much as I, but anyway, this is the only means of disposing
of this anonymous letter. It is not the first that my husband
has received, and on my score too. Alas ! how I used to
laugh over them !

" My one aim is to make my husband think that the
letter comes from M. Valenod ; I have no doubt that he is its
author. If you leave the house, make a point of establishing
yourself at Verrieres ; I will manage that my husband should
think of passing a fortnight there in order to prove to the
fools there was no coldness between him and me. Once at
Verrieres, establish ties of friendship with everyone, even with
the Liberals. I am sure that all their ladies will seek you
out.

" Do not quarrel with M. Valenod, or cut off his ears, as you
said you would one day. Try, on the contrary, to ingratiate
yourself with him. The essential point is that it should be
notorious in Verrieres that you are going to enter the house
hold either of Valenod or of someone else to take charge of
the children's education.

" That is what my husband will never put up with. If he
does feel bound to resign himself to it, well, at any rate, you
will be living in Verrieres and I shall be seeing you sometimes.
My children, who love you so much, will go and see you.
Great God ! I feel that I love my children all the more
because they love you. How is all this going to end ? I am
wandering . . . Anyway you understand your line of conduct.
Be nice, polite, but not in any way disdainful to those
coarse persons. I ask you on my lyiees; they will be the
arbiters of our fate. Do not fear for a moment but that, so
far as you are concerned, my husband will conform to what
public opinion lays down for him.

" It is you who will supply me with the anonymous letter.
Equip yourself with patience and a pair of scissors, cut out
from a book the words which you will see, then stick them
with the mouth-glue on to the leaf of loose paper which I am
sending you. It comes to me from M. Valenod. Be on your
guard against a search in your room ; burn the pages of the
book which you are going to mutilate. If you do not find
the words ready-made, have the patience to form them letter
by letter. I have made the anonymous letter too short.

ANNONYMOUS LETTERS 127

Annonymous Letter.
' Madame,

All your little goings-on are known, but the persons
interested in stopping have been warned. I have still sufficient
friendship left for you to urge you to cease all relations with the
little peasant. If you are sensible enough to do this, your husband
will believe that the notification he has received is misleading, and
he will be left in his illusion. Remember that I have your secret ;
tremble, unhappy woman, you must now walk straight before me.'

" As soon as you have finished glueing together the words
that make up this letter (have you recognised the director's
special style of speech) leave the house, I will meet you.

" I will go into the village and come back with a troubled
face. As a matter of fact I shall be very much troubled.
Great God ! What a risk I run, and all because you thought
you guessed an anonymous letter. Finally, looking very much
upset, I shall give this letter to my husband and say that an
unknown man handed it to me. As for you, go for a walk
with the children, on the road to the great woods, and do not
come back before dinner-time.

" You will be able to see the tower of the dovecot from the
top of the rocks. If things go well for us, I will place a white
handkerchief there, in case of the contrary, there will be
nothing at all.

" Ungrateful man, will not your heart find out some means
of telling me that you love me before you leave for that walk.
Whatever happens, be certain of one thing : I shall never
survive our final separation by a single day. Oh, you bad
mother ! but what is the use of my writing those two words,
dear Julien ? I do not feel them, at this moment I can only
think of you. I have only written them so as not to be
blamed by you, but what is the good of deception now that I
find myself face to face with losing you? Yes, let my soul
seem monstrous to you, but do not let me lie to the man whom
I adore. I have already deceived only too much in this life
of mine. Go ! I forgive you if you love me no more. I
have not the time to read over my letter. It is a small thing
in my eyes to pay for the happy days that I have just passed
in your arms with the price of my life. You know that they
will cost me more."

CHAPTER XXI

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we ;

For such as we are made of, such we be. Twelfth Night.

It was with a childish pleasure that for a whole hour Julien
put the words together. As he came out of his room, he met
his pupils with their mother. She took the letter with a
simplicity and a courage whose calmness terrified him.

" Is the mouth-glue dry enough yet ? " she asked him.

"And is this the woman who was so maddened by remorse ? "
he thought. "What are her plans at this moment?" He
was too proud to ask her, but she had never perhaps pleased
him more.

" If this turns out badly," she added with the same coolness,
" I shall be deprived of everything. Take charge of this, and
bury it in some place of the mountain. It will perhaps one
day be my only resource."

She gave him a glass case in red morocco filled with
gold and some diamonds.

" Now go," she said to him.

She kissed the children, embracing the youngest twice.
Julien remained motionless. She left him at a rapid pace
without looking at him.

From the moment that M. de Renal had opened the anony-
mous letter his life had been awful. He had not been so agitated
since a duel which he had just missed having in 1816, and
to do him justice, the prospect of receiving a bullet would
have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the letter from
every standpoint. " Is that not a woman's handwriting?" he
said to himself. In that case, what woman had written it?
He reviewed all those whom he knew at Verrieres without

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 129

being able to fix his suspicions on any one. Could a man
have dictated that letter ? Who was that man ? Equal
uncertainty on this point. The majority of his acquaintances
were jealous of him, and, no doubt, hated him. " I must
consult my wife," he said to himself through habit, as he got
up from the arm-chair in which he had collapsed.

" Great God ! " he said aloud before he got up, striking his
head, "it is she above all of whom I must be distrustful.
At the present moment she is my enemy," and tears came
into his eyes through sheer anger.

By a poetic justice for that hardness of heart which
constitutes the provincial idea of shrewdness, the two men
whom M. de Renal feared the most at the present moment
were his two most intimate friends.

" I have ten friends perhaps after those," and he passed
them in review, gauging the degree of consolation which he
could get from each one. " All of them, all of them," he
exclaimed in a rage, " will derive the most supreme pleasure
from my awful experience."

As luck would have it, he thought himself envied, and not
without reason. Apart from his superb town mansion in

which the king of had recently spent the night, and thus

conferred on it an enduring honour, he had decorated his
chateau at Vergy extremely well. The facade was painted
white and the windows adorned with fine green shutters. He
was consoled for a moment by the thought of this magnificence.
The fact was that this chateau was seen from three or four
leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or
so-called chateaux of the neighbourhood, which had been left
in the humble grey colour given them by time.

There was one of his friends on whose pity and whose
tears M. de Renal could count, the churchwarden of the
parish ; but he was an idiot who cried at everything.
This man, however, was his only resource. " What
unhappiness is comparable to mine," he exclaimed with rage.
" What isolation ! "

" Is it possible ? " said this truly pitiable man to himself.
" Is it possible that I have no friend in my misfortune of
whom I can ask advice ? for my mind is wandering, I feel it.
" Oh, Falcoz ! oh, Ducros ! " he exclaimed with bitterness.
Those were the names of two friends of his childhood whom

i 3 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

he had dropped owing to his snobbery in 1814. They were
not noble, and he had wished to change the footing of equality
on which they had been living with him since their childhood.

One of them, Falcoz, a paper-merchant of Verrieres, and a
man of intellect and spirit, had bought a printing press in the
chief town of the department and undertaken the production
of a journal. The priestly congregation had resolved to ruin
him ; his journal had been condemned, and he had been
deprived of his printer's diploma. In these sad circumstances
he ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time for ten
years. The mayor of Verrieres thought it his duty to answer
in the old Roman style : " If the King's Minister were to do
me the honour of consulting me, I should say to him, ruin
ruthlessly all the provincial printers, and make printing a
monopoly like tobacco." M. de Renal was horrified to
remember the terms of this letter to an intimate friend whom
all Verrieres had once admired, " Who would have said that
I, with my rank, my fortune, my decorations, would ever
come to regret it ? " It was in these transports of rage,
directed now against himself, now against all his surroundings,
that he passed an awful night ; but, fortunately, it never
occurred to him to spy on his wife.

" I am accustomed to Louise," he said to himself, " she
knows all my affairs. If I were free to marry to-morrow, I
should not find anyone to take her place." Then he began
to plume himself on the idea that his wife was innocent.
This point of view did not require any manifestation of
character, and suited him much better. " How many
calumniated women has one not seen ? "

" But," he suddenly exclaimed, as he walked about
feverishly, " shall I put up with her making a fool of me with
her lover as though I were a man of no account, some mere
ragamuffin ? Is all Verrieres to make merry over my
complaisance ? What have they not said about Charmier (he
was a husband in the district who was notoriously deceived ?)
Was there not a smile on every lip at the mention of his
name ? He is a good advocate, but whoever said anything
about his talent for speaking ? ' Oh, Charmier,' they say,
1 Bernard's Charmier,' he is thus designated by the name of
the man who disgraces him."

" I have no daughter, thank heaven," M. de Renal would

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 13 1

say at other times, "and the way in which I am going to
punish the mother will consequently not be so harmful to my
children's household. I could surprise this little peasant
with my wife and kill them both ; in that case the tragedy of
the situation would perhaps do away with the grotesque
element." This idea appealed to him. He followed it up in
all its details. " The penal code is on my side, and whatever
happens our congregation and my friends on the jury will save
me." He examined his hunting-knife which was quite sharp,
but the idea of blood frightened him.

" I could thrash this insolent tutor within an inch of his
life and hound him out of the house ; but what a sensation
that would make in Verrieres and even over the whole
department ! After Falcoz' journal had been condemned, and
when its chief editor left prison, I had a hand in making him
lose his place of six hundred francs a year. They say that
this scribbler has dared to show himself again in Besangon.
He may lampoon me adroitly and in such a way that it will
be impossible to bring him up before the courts. Bring him
up before the courts ! The insolent wretch will insinuate in
a thousand and one ways that he has spoken the truth. A
well-born man who keeps his place like I do, is hated by all
the plebeians. I shall see my name in all those awful Paris
papers. Oh, my God, what depths. To see the ancient
name of Renal plunged in the mire of ridicule. If I ever
travel I shall have to change my name. What ! abandon that
name which is my glory and my strength. Could anything be
worse than that?

" If I do not kill my wife but turn her out in disgrace, she
has her aunt in Besangon who is going to hand all her
fortune over to her. My wife will go and live in Paris with
Julien. It will be known at Verrieres, and I shall be taken
for a dupe." The unhappy man then noticed from the paleness
of the lamplight that the dawn was beginning to appear. He
went to get a little fresh air in the garden. At this moment
he had almost determined to make no scandal, particularly in
view of the fact that a scandal would overwhelm with joy all
his good friends in Verrieres.

The promenade in the garden calmed him a little. " No,"
he exclaimed, " I shall not deprive myself of my wife, she is
too useful to me." He imagined with horror what his house

132 THE RED AND THE BLACK

would be without his wife. The only relative he had was
the Marquise of R old, stupid, and malicious.

A very sensible idea occurred to him, but its execution
required a strength of character considerably superior to the
small amount of character which the poor man possessed.
" If I keep my wife," he said to himself, " I know what I
shall do one day ; on some occasion when she makes me
lose patience, I shall reproach her with her guilt. She is
proud, we shall quarrel, and all this will happen before she
has inherited her aunt's fortune. And how they will all make
fun of me then ! My wife loves her children, the result will
be that everything will go to them. But as for me, I shall be
the laughing-stock of Verrieres. ' What,' they will say, ' he
could not even manage to revenge himself on his wife ! '
Would it not be better to leave it and verify nothing ? In
that case I tie my hands, and cannot afterwards reproach her
with anything."

An instant afterwards M. de Renal, once more a prey to
wounded vanity, set himself laboriously to recollect all the
methods of procedure mentioned in the billiard-room of the
Casino or the Nobles' Club in Verrieres, when some fine
talker interrupted the pool to divert himself at the expense of
some deceived husband. How cruel these pleasantries
appeared to him at the present moment !

" My God, why is my wife not dead ! then I should be
impregnable against ridicule. Why am I not a widower ? I
should go and pass six months in Paris in the best society.
After this moment of happiness occasioned by the idea of
widowerhood, his imagination reverted to the means of
assuring himself of the truth. Should he put a slight layer of
bran before the door of Julien's room at midnight after
everyone had gone to bed ? He would see the impression of
the feet in the following morning.

" But that's no good," he suddenly exclaimed with rage.
" That inquisitive Elisa will notice it, and they will soon know
all over the house that I am jealous."

In another Casino tale a husband had assured himself of his
misfortune by tying a hair with a little wax so that it shut the
door of the gallant as effectually as a seal.

After so many hours of uncertainty this means of clearing
up his fate seemed to him emphatically the best, and he was

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 133

thinking of availing himself of it when, in one of the turnings
of the avenue he met the very woman whom he would like to
have seen dead. She was coming back from the village. She
had gone to hear mass in the church of Vergy. A tradition,
extremely doubtful in the eyes of the cold philosopher, but in
which she believed, alleges that the little church was once the
chapel of the chateau of the Lord of Vergy. This idea
obsessed Madame de Renal all the time in the church that
she had counted on spending in prayer. She kept on imagin-
ing to herself the spectacle of her husband killing Julien when
out hunting as though by accident, and then making her eat
his heart in the evening.

" My fate," she said to herself, " depends on what he will
think when he listens to me. It may be I shall never get
another opportunity of speaking to him after this fatal quarter
of an hour. He is not a reasonable person who is governed
by his intellect. In that case, with the help of my weak
intelligence, I could anticipate what he will do or say. He
will decide our common fate. He has the power. But this
fate depends on my adroitness, on my skill in directing the
ideas of this crank, who is blinded by his rage and unable to
see half of what takes place. Great God ! I need talent and
coolness, where shall I get it ? "

She regained her calmness as though by magic, and she
entered the garden and saw her husband in the distance.
His dishevelled hair and disordered dress showed that he had
not slept.

She gave him a letter with a broken seal but folded. As
for him, without opening it, he gazed at his wife with the eyes
of a madman.

" Here's an abominable thing," she said to him, " which an
evil-looking man who makes out that he knows you and is
under an obligation to you, handed to me as I was passing
behind the notary's garden. I insist on one thing and that is
that you send back this M. Julien to his parents and without
delay." Madame de Renal hastened to say these words,
perhaps a little before the psychological moment, in order
to free herself from the awful prospect of having to say
them.

She was seized with joy on seeing that which she was
occasioning to her husband. She realised from the fixed stare

134 THE RED AND THE BLACK

which he was rivetting on her that Julien had surmised
rightly.

" What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead
of succumbing to so real a misfortune," she thought. " He
will go very far in the future ! Alas, his successes will only
make him forget me."

This little act of admiration for the man whom she adored
quite cured her of her trouble.

She congratulated herself on her tactics. " I have not been
unworthy of Julien," she said to herself with a sweet and
secret pleasure.

M. de Renal kept examining the second anonymous letter
which the reader may remember was composed of printed
words glued on to a paper verging on blue. He did not say
a word for fear of giving himself away. " They still make fun
of me in every possible way," said M. de Renal to himself,
overwhelmed with exhaustion. " Still more new insults to
examine and all the time on accouut of my wife." He was
on the point of heaping on her the coarsest insults He was
barely checked by the prospects of the Besancon legacy.
Consumed by the need of venting his feelings on something,
he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous letter and
began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get
away from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came
back to her in a quieter frame of mind.

" The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien
away," she said immediately, " after all it is only a labourer's
son. You will compensate him by a few crowns and besides
he is clever and will easily manage to find a place, with M.
Valenod for example, or with the sub-prefect De Maugiron
who both have children. In that way you will not be doing
him any wrong. . . ."

" There you go talking like the fool that you are," exclaimed
M. de Renal in a terrible voice. " How can one hope that a
woman will show any good sense ? You never bother yourself
about common sense. How can you ever get to know any-
thing ? Your indifference and your idleness give you no
energy except for hunting those miserable butterflies, which
we are unfortunate to have in our houses."

Madame de Renal let him speak and he spoke for a long
time. He was working- off his anger, to use the local expression.

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 135

" Monsieur," she answered him at last, " I speak as a
woman who has been outraged in her honour, that is to say,
in what she holds most precious."

Madame de Renal preserved an unalterable sang-froid
during all this painful conversation on the result of which
depended the possibility of still living under the same roof as
Julien. She sought for the ideas which she thought most
adapted to guide her husband's blind anger into a safe channel.
She had been insensible to all the insulting imputations which
he had addressed to her. She was not listening to them, she
was then thinking about Julien. " Will he be pleased with
me?"

" This little peasant whom we have loaded with attentions,
and even with presents, may be innocent," she said to him at
last, " but he is none the less the occasion of the first affront
that I have ever received. Monsieur, when I read this
abominable paper, I vowed to myself that either he or I
should leave your house."

" Do you want to make a scandal so as to dishonour me
and yourself as well ? You will make things hum in Verrieres
I can assure you."

" It is true, the degree of prosperity in which your prudent
management has succeeded in placing you yourself, your
family and the town is the subject of general envy. . . . Well,
I will urge Julien to ask you for a holiday to go and spend
the month with that wood-merchant of the mountains, a fit
friend to be sure for this little labourer."

" Mind you do nothing at all," resumed M. de Renal with a
fair amount of tranquillity. " I particularly insist on your not
speaking to him. You will put him into a temper and make
him quarrel with me. You know to what extent this little
gentleman is always spoiling for a quarrel."

"That young man has no tact," resumed Madame de Renal.
" He may be learned, you know all about that, but at bottom
he is only a peasant. For my own part I never thought much
of him since he refused to marry Elisa. It was an assured
fortune ; and that on the pretext that sometimes she had
made secret visits to M. Valenod."

" Ah," said M. de Renal, lifting up his eyebrows inordinately.
" What, did Julien tell you that ? "

" Not exactly, he always talked of the vocation which calls

136 THE RED AND THE BLACK

him to the holy ministry, but believe me, the first vocation
for those lower-class people is getting their bread and butter.
He gave me to understand that he was quite aware of her
secret visits."

" And I I was ignorant," exclaimed M. de Renal, growing
as angry as before and accentuating his words. " Things take
place in my house which I know nothing about. . . . What !
has there been anything between Elisa and Valenod ? "

" Oh, that's old history, my dear," said Madame de Renal
with a smile, "and perhaps no harm has come of it. It was
at the time when your good friend Valenod would not have
minded their thinking at Verrieres that a perfectly platonic
little affection was growing up between him and me."

"I had that idea once myself," exclaimed M. de Renal,
furiously striking his head as he progressed from discovery to
discovery, " and you told me nothing about it."

" Should one set two friends by the ears on account of a
little fit of vanity on the part of our dear director ? What
society woman has not had addressed to her a few letters
which were both extremely witty and even a little gallant ? "

" He has written to you ? "

" He writes a great deal."

" Show me those letters at once, I order you," and M. de
Renal pulled himself up to his six feet.

" I will do nothing of the kind," he was answered with a
sweetness verging on indifference. "I will show you them
one day when you are in a better frame of mind."

" This very instant, odds life,' - ' exclaimed M. de Renal,
transported with rage and yet happier than he had been for
twelve hours.

"Will you swear to me," said Madame de Renal quite
gravely, " never to quarrel with the director of the workhouse
about these letters ? "

" Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take those foundlings away
from him, but," he continued furiously, " I want those letters
at once. Where are they ? "

" In a drawer in my secretary, but I shall certainly not give
you the key."

" I'll manage to break it," he cried, running towards his
wife's room.

He did break in fact with a bar of iron a costly secretary of

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 137

veined mahogany which came from Paris and which he had
often been accustomed to wipe with the nap of his coat, when
he thought he had detected a spot.

Madame de Renal had climbed up at a run the hundred
and twenty steps of the dovecot. She tied the corner of a
white handkerchief to one of the bars of iron of the little
window. She was the happiest of women. With tears in her
eyes she looked towards the great mountain forest. " Doubt-
less," she said to herself, " Julien is watching for this happy
signal."

She listened attentively for a long time and then she cursed
the monotonous noise of the grasshopper and the song of the
birds. " Had it not been for that importunate noise, a cry of
joy starting from the big rocks could have arrived here."
Her greedy eye devoured that immense slope of dark
verdure which was as level as a meadow.

"Why isn't he clever enough," she said to herself, quite
overcome, " to invent some signal to tell me that his happiness
is equal to mine ? " She only came down from the dovecot
when she was frightened of her husband coming there to look
for her.

She found him furious. He was perusing the soothing
phrases of M. de Valenod and reading them with an emotion
to which they were but little used.

" I always come back to the same idea," said Madame de
Renal seizing a moment when a pause in her husband's
ejaculations gave her the possibility of getting heard. "It is
necessary for Julien to travel. Whatever talent he may have
for Latin, he is only a peasant after all, often coarse and
lacking in tact. Thinking to be polite, he addresses inflated
compliments to me every day, which are in bad taste. He
learns them by heart out of some novel or other."

" He never reads one," exclaimed M. de Renal. " I am
assured of it. Do you think that I am the master of a house
who is so blind as to be ignorant of what takes place in his
own home."

" Well, if he doesn't read these droll compliments anywhere,
he invents them, and that's all the worse so far as he is
concerned. He must have talked about me in this tone in
Verrieres and perhaps without going so far," said Madame
Renal with the idea of making a discovery,' " he may have

138 THE RED AND THE BLACK

talked in the same strain to Elisa, which is almost the same
as if he had said it to M. Valenod."

" Ah," exclaimed M. de Renal, shaking the table and the
room with one of the most violent raps ever made by a human
fist. "The anonymous printed letter and Valenod's letters
are written on the same paper."

" At last," thought Madame de Renal. She pretended to
be overwhelmed at this discovery, and without having the
courage to add a single word, went and sat down some way
off on the divan at the bottom of the drawing-room.

From this point the battle was won. She had a great deal
of trouble in preventing M. de Renal from going to speak to
the supposed author of the anonymous letter. " What, can't
you see that making a scene with M. Valenod without sufficient
proof would be the most signal mistake? You are envied,
Monsieur, and who is responsible ? Your talents : your wise
management, your tasteful buildings, the dowry which I have
brought you, and above all, the substantial legacy which we
are entitled to hope for from my good aunt, a legacy, the
importance of which is inordinately exaggerated, have made
you into the first person in Verrieres."

" You are forgetting my birth," said M. de Renal, smiling a
little.

" You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the
province," replied Madame de Renal emphatically. " If the
king were free and could give birth its proper due, you would
no doubt figure in the Chamber of Peers, etc. And being in
this magnificent position, you yet wish to give the envious a
fact to take hold of."

" To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is
equivalent to proclaiming over the whole of Verrieres, nay,
over the whole of Besancon, over the whole province that this
little bourgeois who has been admitted perhaps imprudently to
intimacy with a Renal, has managed to offend him. At the
time when those letters which you have just taken prove that
I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought to kill me.
I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to
show him your anger. Remember that all our neighbours are
only waiting for an excuse to revenge themselves for your
superiority. Remember that in 1816 you had a hand in
certain arrests.

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 139

" I think that you show neither consideration nor love for
me," exclaimed M. de Renal with all the bitterness evoked by
such a memory, " and I was not made a peer."

" I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Renal with
a smile, " that I shall be richer than you are, that I have been
your companion for twelve years, and that by virtue of those
qualifications I am entitled to have a voice in the council
and, above all, in today's business. If you prefer M. Julien
to me," she added, with a touch of temper which was but
thinly disguised, " I am ready to go and pass a winter with
my aunt." These words proved a lucky shot. They possessed
a firmness which endeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy.
It decided M. de Renal, but following the provincial custom,
he still thought for a long time, and went again over all his
arguments ; his wife let him speak. There was still a touch
of anger in his intonation. Finally two hours of futile rant
exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during
the whole night to a continuous fit of anger. He determined
on the line of conduct he was going to follow with regard to
M. Valenod, Julien and even Elisa.

Madame de Renal was on the point once or twice during
this great scene of feeling some sympathy for the very real
unhappiness of the man who had been so dear to her
for twelve years. But true passions are selfish. Besides she
was expecting him every instant to mention the anonymous
letter which he had received the day before and he did not
mention it. In order to feel quite safe, Madame de Renal
wanted to know the ideas which the letter had succeeding in
suggesting to the man on whom her fate depended, for, in the
provinces the husbands are the masters of public opinion.
A husband who complains covers himself with ridicule, an
inconvenience which becomes no less dangerous in France
with each succeeding year; but if he refuses to provide his
wife with money, she falls to the status of a labouring woman
at fifteen sous a day, while the virtuous souls have scruples
about employing her.

An odalisque in the seraglio can love the Sultan with all
her might. He is all-powerful and she has no hope of
stealing his authority by a series of little subtleties. The
master's vengeance is terrible and bloody but martial and
generous ; a dagger thrust finishes everything. But it is by

t4o THE RED AND THE BLACK

stabbing her with public contempt that a nineteenth-century
husband kills his wife. It is by shutting against her the doors
of all the drawing-rooms.

When Madame de Renal returned to her room, her feeling
of danger was vividly awakened. She was shocked by the
disorder in which she found it. The locks of all the pretty
little boxes had been broken. Many planks in the floor had
been lifted up. " He would have no pity on me," she said to
herself. "To think of his spoiling like this, this coloured
wood floor which he likes so much ; he gets red with rage
whenever one of his children comes into it with wet shoes,
and now it is spoilt for ever." The spectacle of this violence
immediately banished the last scruples which she was enter-
taining with respect to that victory which she had won only
too rapidly.

Julien came back with the children a little before the
dinner-bell. Madame de Renal said to him very drily at
dessert when the servant had left the room :

" You have told me about your wish to go and spend a
fortnight at Verrieres. M. de Renal is kind enough to give
you a holiday. You can leave as soon as you like, but the
childrens' exercises will be sent to you every day so that they
do not waste their time." " I shall certainly not allow you
more than a week," said M. de Renal in a very bitter tone.
Julien thought his visage betrayed the anxiety of a man who
was seriously harassed.

" He has not yet decided what line to take," he said to his
love during a moment when they were alone together in the
drawing-room.

Madame de Renal rapidly recounted to him all she had
done since the morning.

" The details are for to-night," she added with a smile.

" Feminine perversity," thought Julien, " What can be the
pleasure, what can be the instinct which induces them to
deceive us."

" I think you are both enlightened and at the same time
blinded by your love," he said to her with some coldness.
" Your conduct to-day has been admirable, but is it prudent
for us to try and see each other to-night? This house is
paved with enemies. Just think of Elisa's passionate hatred
for me."

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER 141

"That hate is very like the passionate indifference which
you no doubt have for me."

" Even if I were indifferent I ought to save you from the
peril in which I have plunged you. If chance so wills it that
M. de Renal should speak to Elisa, she can acquaint him with
everything in a single word. What is to prevent him from
hiding near my room fully armed ? "

" What, not even courage ? " said Madame de Renal, with
all the haughtiness of a scion of nobility.

" I will never demean myself to speak about my courage,"
said Julien, coldly, " it would be mean to do so. Let the
world judge by the facts. But," he added, taking her hand,
" you have no idea how devoted I am to you and how over-
joyed I am of being able to say good-bye to you before this
cruel separation."

CHAPTER XXII

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830

Speech has been given to man to conceal his thought.

R. P. Malagrida.

Julien had scarcely arrived at Verrieres before he reproached
himself with his injustice towards Madame de Renal. " I
should have despised her for a weakling of a woman if she
had not had the strength to go through with her scene with
M. de Renal. But she has acquitted herself like a diplomatist
and I sympathise with the defeat of the man who is my enemy.
There is a bourgeois prejudice in my action; my vanity is
offended because M. de Renal is a man. Men form a vast
and illustrious body to which I have the honour to belong. I
am nothing but a fool." M. Chelan had refused the magnificent
apartments which the most important Liberals in the district
had offered him, when his loss of his living had necessitated
his leaving the parsonage. The two rooms which he had
rented were littered with his books. Julien, wishing to show
Verrieres what a priest could do, went and fetched a dozen
pinewood planks from his father, carried them on his back all
along the Grande-Rue, borrowed some tools from an old
comrade and soon built a kind of bookcase in which he
arranged M. Chelan's books.

" I thought you were corrupted by the vanity of the world,"
said the old man to him as he cried with joy, " but this is
something which well redeems all the childishness of that
brilliant Guard of Honour uniform which has made you so
many enemies."

M. de Renal had ordered Julien to stay at his house. No
one suspected what had taken place. The third day after his
arrival Julien saw no less a personage than M. the sub-prefec

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 143

de Maugiron come all the way up the stairs to his room. It
was only after two long hours of fatuous gossip and long-
winded lamentations about the wickedness of man, the lack
of honesty among the people entrusted with the administration
of the public funds, the dangers of his poor France, etc. etc.,
that Julien was at last vouchsafed a glimpse of the object of
the visit. They were already on the landing of the staircase
and the poor half disgraced tutor was escorting with all proper
deference the future prefect of some prosperous department,
when the latter was pleased to take an interest in Julien's
fortune, to praise his moderation in money matters, etc., etc.
Finally M. de Maugiron, embracing him in the most paternal
way, proposed that he should leave M. de Renal and enter
the household of an official who had children to educate and
who, like King Philippe, thanked Heaven not so much that
they had been granted to him, but for the fact that they had
been born in the same neighbourhood as M. Julien. Their
tutor would enjoy a salary of 800 francs, payable not from
month to month, which is not at all aristocratic, said M. de
Maugiron, but quarterly and always in advance.

It was Julien's turn now. After he had been bored for an
hour and a half by waiting for what he had to say, his answer
was perfect and, above all, as long as a bishop's charge. It
suggested everything and yet said nothing clearly. It showed
at the same time respect for M. de Renal, veneration for the
public of Verrieres and gratitude to the distinguished sub-
prefect. The sub-prefect, astonished at finding him more
Jesuitical than himself, tried in vain to obtain something
definite. Julien was delighted, seized the opportunity to
practise, and started his answer all over again in different
language. Never has an eloquent minister who wished to
make the most of the end of a session when the Chamber
really seemed desirous of waking up, said less in more words.

M. de Maugiron had scarcely left before Julien began to
laugh like a madman. In order to exploit his Jesuitical
smartness, he wrote a nine-page letter to M. de Renal in which
he gave him an account of all that had been said to him and
humbly asked his advice. " But the old scoundrel has not
told me the name of the person who is making the offer. It
is bound to be M. Valenod who, no doubt, sees in my exile at
Verrieres the result of his anonymous letter."

144 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Having sent off his despatch and feeling as satisfied as a
hunter who at six o'clock in the morning on a fine autumn
day, comes out into a plain that abounds with game, he went
out to go and ask advice of M. Chelan. But before he had
arrived at the good cure's, providence, wishing to shower
favours upon him, threw in his path M. de Valenod, to whom
he owned quite freely that his heart was torn in two ; a poor
lad such as he was owed an exclusive devotion to the vocation
to which it had pleased Heaven to call him. But vocation
was not everything in this base world. In order to work
worthily at the vine of the Lord, and to be not totally unworthy
of so many worthy colleagues, it was necessary to be educated ;
it was necessary to spend two expensive years at the seminary
of Besancon ; saving consequently became an imperative
necessity, and was certainly much easier with a salary of eight
hundred francs paid quarterly than with six hundred francs
which one received monthly. On the other hand, did not
Heaven, by placing him by the side of the young de Renals,
and especially by inspiring him with a special devotion to
them, seem to indicate that it was not proper to abandon that
education for another one.

Julien reached such a degree of perfection in that particular
kind of eloquence which has succeeded the drastic quickness
of the empire, that he finished by boring himself with the
sound of his own words.

On reaching home he found a valet of M. Valenod in full
livery who had been looking for him all over the town, with a
card inviting him to dinner for that same day.

Julien had never been in that man's house. Only a few
days before he had been thinking of nothing but the means of
giving him a sound thrashing without getting into trouble with
the police. Although the time of the dinner was one o'clock,
Julien thought it was more deferential to present himself at
half-past twelve at the office of M. the director of the workhouse.
He found him parading his importance in the middle of a lot
of despatch boxes. His large black whiskers, his enormous
quantity of hair, his Greek bonnet placed across the top of his
head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the big chains
of gold crossed all over his breast, and the whole stock-in-
trade of a provincial financier who considers himself prosper-
ous, failed to impose on Julien in the least ; They only

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 145

made him think the more of the thrashing which he owed
him.

He asked for the honour of being introduced to Madame
Valenod. She was dressing and was unable to receive him.
By way of compensation he had the privilege of witnessing the
toilet of M. the director of the workhouse. They subsequently
went into the apartment of Madame Valenod, who introduced
her children to him with tears in her eyes. This lady was
one of the most important in Verrieres, had a big face like a
man's, on which she had put rouge in honour of this great
function. She displayed all the maternal pathos of which she
was capable.

Julien thought all the time of Madame de Renal. His
distrust made him only susceptible to those associations which
are called up by their opposites, but he was then affected to the
verge of breaking down. This tendency was increased by the
sight of the house of the director of the workhouse. He was
shown over it. Everything in it was new and magnificent,
and he was told the price of every article of furniture. But
Julien detected a certain element of sordidness, which smacked
of stolen money into the bargain. Everybody in it, down
to the servants, had the air of setting his face in advance
against contempt.

The collector of taxes, the superintendent of indirect taxes,
the officer of gendarmerie, and two or three other public
officials arrived with their wives. They were followed by some
rich Liberals. Dinner was announced. It occurred to Julien,
who was already feeling upset, that there were some poor
prisoners on the other side of the dining-room wall, and that
an illicit profit had perhaps been made over their rations
of meat in order to purchase all that garish luxury with which
they were trying to overwhelm him.

" Perhaps they are hungry at this very minute," he said to
himself. He felt a choking in his throat. He found it
impossible to eat and almost impossible to speak. Matters
became much worse a quarter of an hour afterwards; they
heard in the distance some refrains of a popular song that
was, it must be confessed, a little vulgar, which was being sung
by one of the inmates. M. Valenod gave a look to one of his
liveried servants who disappeared and soon there was no more
singing to be heard. At that moment a valet offered Julien

10

146 THE RED AND THE BLACK

some Rhine wine in a green glass and Madame Valenod made
a point of asking him to note that this wine cost nine francs a
bottle in the market. Julien held up his green glass and said
to M. Valenod.

" They are not singing that wretched song any more."

"Zounds, I should think not," answered the triumphant
governor. " I have made the rascals keep quiet."

These words were too much for Julien. He had the
manners of his new position, but he had not yet assimilated
its spirit. In spite of all his hypocrisy and its frequent practice,
he felt a big tear drip down his cheek.

He tried to hide it in the green glass, but he found it
absolutely impossible to do justice to the Rhine wine. " Pre-
venting singing he said to himself: Oh, my God, and you
suffer it."

Fortunately nobody noticed his ill-bred emotion. The
collector of taxes had struck up a royalist song. " So this,"
reflected Julien's conscience during the hubbub of the refrain
which was sung in chorus, " is the sordid prosperity which you
will eventually reach, and you will only enjoy it under these
conditions and in company like this. You will, perhaps, have
a post worth twenty thousand francs; but while you gorge
yourself on meat, you will have to prevent a poor prisoner from
singing ; you will give dinners with the money which you have
stolen out of his miserable rations and during your dinners he
will be still more wretched. Oh, Napoleon, how sweet it was
to climb to fortune in your way through the dangers of a
battle, but to think of aggravating the pain of the unfortunate
in this cowardly way."

I own that the weakness which Julien had been manifesting
in this soliloquy gives me a poor opinion of him. He is
worthy of being the accomplice of those kid-gloved conspirators
who purport to change the whole essence of a great country's
existence, without wishing to have on their conscience the
most trivial scratch.

Julien was sharply brought back to his role. He had not
been invited to dine in such good company simply to moon
dreamily and say nothing.

A retired manufacturer of cotton prints, a corresponding
member of the Academy of Besan9on and of that of Uzes,
spoke to him from the other end of the table and asked him

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 147

if what was said everywhere about his astonishing progress in
the study of the New Testament was really true.

A profound silence was suddenly inaugurated. A New
Testament in Latin was found as though by magic in the
possession of the learned member of the two Academies.
After Julien had answered, part of a sentence in Latin was
read at random. Julien then recited. His memory proved
faithful and the prodigy was admired with all the boisterous
energy of the end of dinner. Julien looked at the flushed
faces of the ladies. A good many were not so plain. He
recognised the wife of the collector, who was a fine singer.

" I am ashamed, as a matter of fact, to talk Latin so long
before these ladies," he said, turning his eyes on her. " If M.
Rubigneau," that was the name of the member of the two
Academies, " will be kind enough to read a Latin sentence at
random instead of answering by following the Latin text, I will
try to translate it impromptu." This second test completed his
glory.

Several Liberals were there, who, though rich, were none
the less the happy fathers of children capable of obtaining
scholarships, and had consequently been suddenly converted
at the last mission. In spite of this diplomatic step, M. de
Renal had never been willing to receive them in his house.
These worthy people, who only knew Julien by name and from

having seen him on horseback on the day of the king of 's

entry, were his most noisy admirers. " When will those
fools get tired of listening to this Biblical language, which they
don't understand in the least," he thought. But, on the
contrary, that language amused them by its strangeness and
made them smile. But Julien got tired.

As six o'clock struck he got up gravely and talked about a
chapter in Ligorio's New Theology which he had to learn by
heart to recite on the following day to M. Chelan, " for," he
added pleasantly, " my business is to get lessons said by heart
to me, and to say them by heart myself."

There was much laughter and admiration ; such is the kind
of wit which is customary in Verrieres. Julien had already got
up and in spite of etiquette everybody got up as well, so great
is the dominion exercised by genius. Madame Valenod kept
him for another quarter of an hour. He really must hear her
children recite their catechisms. They made the most absurd

148 THE RED AND THE BLACK

mistakes which he alone noticed. He was careful not to point
them out. " What ignorance of the first principles of religion,"
he thought. Finally he bowed and thought he could get away ;
but they insisted on his trying a fable of La Fontaine.

" That author is quite immoral," said Julien to Madame
Valenod. A certain fable on Messire Jean Chouart dares to pour
ridicule on all that we hold most venerable. He is shrewdly
blamed by the best commentators. Before Julien left he received
four or five invitations to dinner. " This young man is an honour
to the department," cried all the guests in chorus. They even
went so far as to talk of a pension voted out of the municipal
funds to put him in the position of continuing his studies at Paris.

While this rash idea was resounding through the dining-
room Julien had swiftly reached the front door. "You scum,
you scum," he cried, three or four times in succession in a low
voice as he indulged in the pleasure of breathing in the fresh air.

He felt quite an aristocrat at this moment, though he was
the very man who had been shocked for so long a period by
the haughty smile of disdainful superiority which he detected
behind all the courtesies addressed to him at M. de Renal's.
He could not help realising the extreme difference. Why let
us even forget the fact of its being money stolen from the
poor inmates, he said to himself as he went away, let us forget
also their stopping the singing. M. de Renal would never
think of telling his guests the price of each bottle of wine
with which he regales them, and as for this M. Valenod, and
his chronic cataloguing of his various belongings, he cannot
talk of his house, his estate, etc., in the presence of his wife
without saying, " Your house, your estate."

This lady, who was apparently so keenly alive to the delights
of decorum, had just had an awful scene during the dinner
with a servant who had broken a wine-glass and spoilt one of
her dozens ; and the servant too had answered her back with
the utmost insolence.

"What a collection," said Julien to himself; "I would not
live like they do were they to give me half of all they steal. I
shall give myself away one fine day. I should not be able to
restrain myself from expressing the disgust with which they
inspire one."

It was necessary, however, to obev Madame de Renal's in

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 149

junction and be present at several dinners of the same kind.
Julien was the fashion ; he was forgiven his Guard of Honour
uniform, or rather that indiscretion was the real cause of his
successes. Soon the only question in Verrieres was whether
M. de Renal or M. the director of the workhouse would be the
victor in the struggle for the clever young man. These
gentlemen formed, together with M. Maslon, a triumirate which
had tyrannised over the town for a number of years. People
were jealous of the mayor, and the Liberals had good cause for
complaint, but, after all, he was noble and born for a superior
position, while M. Valenod's father had not left him six hundred
francs a year. His career had necessitated a transition from
pitying the shabby green suit which had been so notorious in
his youth, to envying the Norman horses, his gold chains, his
Paris clothes, his whole present prosperity.

Julien thought that he had discovered one honest man in
the whirlpool of this novel world. He was a geometrist named
Gros, and had the reputation of being a Jacobin. Julien,
who had vowed to say nothing but that which he disbelieved
himself, was obliged to watch himself carefully when speaking
to M. Gros. He received big packets of exercises from Vergy.
He was advised to visit his father frequently, and he fulfilled
his unpleasant duty. In a word he was patching his reputation
together pretty well, when he was thoroughly surprised to find
himself woken up one morning by two hands held over his
eyes.

It was Madame de Renal who had made a trip to the town,
and who, running up the stairs four at a time while she left her
children playing with a pet rabbit, had reached Julien's room
a moment before her sons. This moment was delicious but
very short : Madame de Renal had disappeared when the
children arrived with the rabbit which they wanted to show to
their friend. Julien gave them all a hearty welcome, including
the rabbit. He seemed at home again. He felt that he loved
these children and that he enjoyed gossiping with them. He
was astonished at the sweetness of their voices, at the simplicity
and dignity of their little ways ; he felt he needed to purge his
imagination of all the vulgar practices and all the unpleasant-
nesses among which he had been living in Verrieres. For
there everyone was always frightened of being scored off, and
luxury and poverty were at daggers drawn.

150 THE RED AND THE BLACK

The people with whom he would dine would enter into
confidences over the joint which were as humiliating for
themselves as they were nauseating to the hearer.

" You others, who are nobles, you are right to be proud," he
said to Madame de Renal, as he gave her an account of all
the dinners which he had put up with.

" You're the fashion then," and she laughed heartily as she
thought of the rouge which Madame Valenod thought herself
obliged to put on each time she expected Julien. " I think
she has designs on your heart," she added.

The breakfast was delicious. The presence of the children,
though apparently embarrassing, increased as a matter of fact
the happiness of the party. The poor children did not know
how to give expression to the joy at seeing Julien again. The
servants had not failed to tell them that he had been offered
two hundred francs a year more to educate the little
Valenods.

Stanislas-Xavier, who was still pale from his illness, suddenly
asked his mother in the middle of the breakfast, the value of
his silver cover and of the goblet in which he was drinking.

" Why do you want to know that ? "

" I want to sell them to give the price to M. Julien so that
he shan't be done if he stays with us."

Julien kissed him with tears in his eyes. His mother wept
unrestrainedly, for Julien took Stanislas on his knees and
explained to him that he should not use the word " done "
which, when employed in that meaning was an expression only
fit for the servants' hall. Seeing the pleasure which he was
giving to Madame de Renal, he tried to explain the meaning
of being " done " by picturesque illustrations which amused
the children.

" I understand," said Stanislas, " it's like the crow who is
silly enough to let his cheese fall and be taken by the fox who
has been playing the flatterer."

Madame de Renal felt mad with joy and covered her
children with kisses, a process which involved her leaning a
little on Julien.

Suddenly the door opened. It was M. de Renal. His
severe and discontented expression contrasted strangely with
the sweet joy which his presence dissipated. Madame de
Renal grew pale, she felt herself incapable of denying anything.

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 151

Julien seized command of the conversation and commenced
telling M. the mayor in a loud voice the incident of the silver
goblet which Stanislas wanted to sell. He was quite certain
this story would not be appreciated. M. de Renal first of
all frowned mechanically at the mere mention of money.
Any allusion to that mineral, he was accustomed to say, is
always a prelude to some demand made upon my purse. But
this was something more than a mere money matter. His
suspicions were increased. The air of happiness which
animated his family during his absence was not calculated to
smooth matters over with a man who was a prey to so touchy
a vanity. " Yes, yes," he said, as his wife started to praise to
him the combined grace and cleverness of the way in which
Julien gave ideas to his pupils. " I know, he renders me
hateful to my own children. It is easy enough for him to
make himself a hundred times more loveable to them than
I am myself, though after all, I am the master. In this
century everything tends to make legitimate authority un-
popular. Poor France ! "

Madame de Renal had not stopped to examine the fine
shades of the welcome which her husband gave her. She
had just caught a glimpse of the possibility of spending twelve
hours with Julien. She had a lot of purchases to make in
the town and declared that she positively insisted in going to
dine at the tavern. She stuck to her idea in spite of all
her husband's protests and remonstrances. The children were
delighted with the mere word tavern, which our modern
prudery denounces with so much gusto.

M. de Renal left his wife in the first draper's shop which
she entered and went to. pay some visits. He came back
more morose than he had been in the morning. He was
convinced that the whole town was busy with himself and
Julien. As a matter of fact no one had yet given him any
inkling as to the more offensive part of the public gossip.
Those items which had been repeated to M. the mayor dealt
exclusively with the question of whether Julien would remain
with him with six hundred francs, or would accept the eight
hundred francs offered by M. the director of the workhouse.

The director, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave
him the cold shoulder. These tactics were not without
cleverness. There is no impulsiveness in the provinces.

152 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Sensations are so rare there that they are never allowed to be
wasted.

M. le Valenod was what is called a hundred miles from Paris
n/araud; that means a coarse imprudent type of man. His
triumpha nt existence since 1815 had consolidated his natural
qualities. He reigned, so to say, in Verrieres subject to the
orders of M. de Renal; but as he was much more energetic,
was ashamed of nothing, had a finger in everything, and was
always going about writing and speaking, and was oblivious of
all snubs, he had, although without any personal pretensions,
eventually come to equal the mayor in reputation in the eyes
of the ecclesiastical authorities. M. Valenod had, as it were,
said to the local tradesmen " Give me the two biggest fools
among your number;" to the men of law "Show me the two
greatest dunces ; " to the sanitary officials " Point out to me
the two biggest charlatans." When he had thus collected the
most impudent members of each separate calling, he had
practically said to them, " Let us reign together."

The manners of those people were offensive to M. de
Renal. The coarseness of Valenod took offence at nothing,
not even the frequency with which the little abbe Maslon
would give the lie to him in public.

But in the middle of all this prosperity M. Valenod found
it necessary to reassure himself by a number of petty acts of
insolence on the score of the crude truths which he well
realised that everybody was justified in addressing to him.
His activity had redoubled since the fears which the visit of
M. Appert had left him. He had made three journeys to
Besancon. He wrote several letters by each courier; he
sent others by unknown men who came to his house at night-
fall. Perhaps he had been wrong in securing the dismissal
of the old cure Chelan. For this piece of vindictiveness had
resulted in his being considered an extremely malicious man
by several pious women of good birth. Besides, the render-
ing of this service had placed him in absolute dependence on
M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair from whom he received some
strange commissions. He had reached this point in his
intrigues when he had yielded to the pleasure of writing an
anonymous letter, and thus increasing his embarrassment. His
wife declared to him that she wanted to have Julien in her
house; her vanity was intoxicated with the idea.

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 153

Such being his position M. Valenod imagined in advance
a decisive scene with his old colleague M. de Renal. The
latter might address to him some harsh words, which he
would not mind much ; but he might write to Besancon and
even to Paris. Some minister's cousin might suddenly fall
down on Verrieres and take over the workhouse. Valenod
thought of coming to terms with the Liberals. It was for
that purpose that several of them had been invited to the
dinner when Julien was present. He would have obtained
powerful support against the mayor but the elections might
supervene, and it was only too evident that the directorship
of the workhouse was inconsistent with voting on the wrong
side. Madame de Renal had made a shrewd guess at this
intrigue, and while she explained it to Julien as he gave her
his arm to pass from one shop to another, they found them-
selves gradually taken as far as the Cours de la Fidelite where
they spent several hours nearly as tranquil as those at
Vergy.

At the same time M. Valenod was trying to put off a definite
crisis with his old patron by himself assuming the aggressive.
These tactics succeeded on this particular day, but aggravated
the mayor's bad temper. Never has vanity at close grips
with all the harshness and meanness of a pettifogging love of
money reduced a man to a more sorry condition than that
of M. de Renal when he entered the tavern. The children,
on the other hand, had never been more joyful and more
merry. This contrast put the finishing touch on his pique.

" So far as I can see I am not wanted in my family," he
said as he entered in a tone which he meant to be impressive.

For answer, his wife took him on one side and declared
that it was essential to send Julien away. The hours of
happiness which she had just enjoyed had given her again the
ease and firmness of demeanour necessary to follow out the
plan of campaign which she had been hatching for a fortnight.
The finishing touch to the trouble of the poor mayor of
Verrieres was the fact that he knew that they joked publicly
in the town about his love for cash. Valenod was as generous
as a thief, and on his side had acquitted himself brilliantly in
the last five or six collections for the Brotherhood of St.
Joseph, the congregation of the Virgin, the congregation of
the Holy Sacrament, etc., etc.

1 54 THE RED AND THE BLACK

M. de Renal's name had been seen more than once at the
bottom of the list of gentlefolk of Verrieres, and the surround-
ing neighbourhood who were adroitly classified in the list of
the collecting brethren according to the amount of their
offerings. It was in vain that he said that he was not making
money. The clergy stands no nonsense in such matters.

CHAPTER XXIII

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL

II piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno, e ben pagato da
certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar. Casti.

Let us leave this petty man to his petty fears ; why aid he
take a man of spirit into his household when he needed some-
one with the soul of a valet? Why can't he select his staff?
The ordinary trend of the nineteenth century is that when a
noble and powerful individual encounters a man of spirit, he
kills him, exiles him and imprisons him, or so humiliates him
that the other is foolish enough to die of grief. In this
country it so happens that it is not merely the man of spirit
who suffers. The great misfortunes of the little towns of France
and of representative governments, like that of New York, is
that they find it impossible to forget the existence of
individuals like M. de Renal. It is these men who make
public opinion in a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, and
public opinion is terrible in a country which has a charter of
liberty. A man, though of a naturally noble and generous
disposition, who would have been your friend in the natural
course of events, but who happens to live a hundred leagues
off, judges you by the public opinion of your town which is
made by those fools who have chanced to be born noble, rich
and conservative. Unhappy is the man who distinguishes
himself.

Immediately after dinner they left for Vergy, but the next
day but one Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres.
An hour had not passed before he discovered to his great
surprise that Madame de Renal had some mystery up her
sleeve. Whenever he came into the room she would break
off her conversation with her husband and would almost seem

156 THE RED AND THE BLACK

to desire that he should go away. Julien did not need to
be given this hint twice. He became cold and reserved.
Madame de Renal noticed it and did not ask for an explana-
tion. " Is she going to give me a successor," thought Julien.
" And to think of her being so familiar with me the day before
yesterday, but that is how these great ladies are said to act.
It's just like kings. One never gets any more warning than
the disgraced minister who enters his house to find his letter
of dismissal." Julien noticed that these conversations which
left off so abruptly at his approach, often dealt with a big
house which belonged to the municipality of Verrieres, a
house which though old was large and commodious and
situated opposite the church in the most busy commercial
district of the town. " What connection can there be between
this house and a new lover," said Julien to himself. In his
chagrin he repeated to himself the pretty verses of Francis I.
which seemed novel to him, for Madame de Renal had only
taught him them a month before :

Souvent femme varie
Bien fol est qui s'y fie.

M. de Renal took the mail to Besancon. This journey was
a matter of two hours. He seemed extremely harassed. On
his return he threw a big grey paper parcel on the table.

" Here's that silly business," he said to his wife. An hour
afterwards Julien saw the bill-poster carrying the big parcel.
He followed him eagerly. " I shall learn the secret at the
first street corner." He waited impatiently behind the bill-
poster who was smearing the back of the poster with his big
brush. It had scarcely been put in its place before Julien's
curiosity saw the detailed announcement of the putting up for
public auction of that big old house whose name had figured
so frequently in M. de Renal's conversations with his wife.
The auction of the lease was announced for to-morrow at two
o'clock in the Town Hall after the extinction of the third fire.
Julien was very disappointed. He found the time a little
short. How could there be time to apprise all the other
would-be purchasers. But, moreover, the bill, which was dated
a fortnight back, and which he read again in its entirety in
three distinct places, taught him nothing.

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 157

He went to visit the house which was to let. The porter,
who had not seen him approach, was saying mysteriously to a
neighbour :

"Pooh, pooh, waste of time. M. Maslon has promised
him that he shall have it for three hundred francs ; and, as the
mayor kicked, he has been summoned to the bishop's palace
by M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair."

Julien's arrival seemed very much to disconcert the two
friends who did not say another word. Julien made a point
of being present at the auction of the lease.

There was a crowd in the badly-lighted hall, but everybody
kept quizzing each other in quite a singular way. All eyes
were fixed on a table where Julien perceived three little lighted
candle-ends on a tin plate. The usher was crying out "Three
hundred francs, gentlemen."

" Three hundred francs, that's a bit too thick," said a man
to his neighbour in a low voice. Julien was between the two
of them. "It's worth more than eight hundred, I will raise the
bidding," " It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.
What will you gain by putting M. Maslon, M. Valenod, the
Bishop, this terrible Grand Vicar de Frilair and the whole
gang on your track."

" Three hundred and twenty francs," shouted out the other.

" Damned brute," answered his neighbour. " Why here
we have a spy of the mayor," he added, designating Julien.

Julien turned sharply round to punish this remark, but the
two, Franc-comtois, were no longer paying any attention to
him. Their coolness gave him back his own. At that moment
the last candle-end went out and the usher's drawling voice
awarded the house to M. de St. Giraud of the office of the

prefecture of for a term of nine years and for a rent of

320 francs.

As soon as the mayor had left the hall, the gossip began again.

" Here's thirty francs that Grogeot's recklessness is landing
the municipality in for," said one " But," answered another,
" M. de Saint Giraud will revenge himself on Grogeot."

"How monstrous," said a big man on Julien's left. "A
house which I myself would have given eight hundred francs
for my factory, and I would have got a good bargain."

" Pooh ! " answered a young manufacturer, " doesn't M. de
St. Giraud belong to the congregation? Haven't his four

158 THE RED AND THE BLACK

children got scholarships ? poor man ! The community of
Verrieres must give him five hundred francs over and above
his salary, that is all."

"And to say that the mayor was not able to stop it,"
remarked a third. " For he's an ultra he is, I'm glad to say,
but he doesn't steal."

" Doesn't he ? " answered another. " Suppose it's simply
a mere game of ' snap ' * then. Everything goes into a big
common purse, and everything is divided up at the end of
the year. But here's that little Sorel, let's go away."

Julien got home in a very bad temper. He found Madame
de Renal very sad.

"You come from the auction ? " she said to him.
" Yes, madam, where I had the honour of passing for a spy
of M. the Mayor."

" If he had taken my advice, he would have gone on a
journey."

At this moment Monsieur de Renal appeared : he looked
very dismal. The dinner passed without a single word.
Monsieur de Renal ordered Julien to follow the children to
Vergy.

Madame de Renal endeavoured to console her husband.
" You ought to be used to it, my dear."
That evening they were seated in silence around the
domestic hearth. The crackle of the burnt pinewood was
their only distraction. It was one of those moments of silence
which happen in the most united families. One of the
children cried out gaily,

" Somebody's ringing, somebody's ringing ! "
" Zounds ! supposing it's Monsieur de Saint Giraud who has
come under the pretext of thanking me," exclaimed the mayor.
" I will give him a dressing down. It is outrageous. It is
Valenod to whom he'll feel under an obligation, and it is I
who get compromised. What shall I say if those damned
Jacobin journalists get hold of this anecdote, and turn me
into a M. Nonante Cinque."

A very good-looking man, with big black whiskers, entered
at this moment, preceded by the servant.

" Monsieur the mayor, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a

* C'est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game
with a pun on the word " vole."

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 159

letter which M. the Chevalier de Beauvaisis, who is attached
to the Embassy of Naples, gave me for you on my departure.
That is only nine days ago, added Signor Geronimo, gaily
looking at Madame de Renal. Your cousin, and my good
friend, Signor de Beauvaisis says that you know Italian,
Madame."

The Neapolitan's good humour changed this gloomy even-
ing into a very gay one. Madame de Renal insisted upon
giving him supper. She put the whole house on the go. She
wanted to free Julien at any price from the imputation of
espionage which she had heard already twice that day.

Signor Geronimo was an excellent singer, excellent company,
and had very gay qualities which, at any rate in France, are
hardly compatible with each other. After dinner he sang a
little duet with Madame de Renal, and told some charming
tales. At one o'clock in the morning the children protested,
when Julien suggested that they should go to bed.

" Another of those stories," said the eldest.

" It is my own, Signorino," answered Signor Geronimo.

"Eight years ago I was, like you, a young pupil of the
Naples Conservatoire. I mean I was your age, but I did not
have the honour to be the son of the distinguished mayor of
the pretty town of Verrieres." This phrase made M. de Renal
sigh, and look at his wife.

" Signor Zingarelli," continued the young singer, somewhat
exaggerating his action, and thus making the children burst
into laughter, "Signor Zingarelli was an excellent though
severe master. He is, not popular at the Conservatoire, but
he insists on the pretence being kept up that he is. I went
out as often as I could. I used to go to the little Theatre de
San Carlino, where I used to hear divine music. But heavens !
the question was to scrape together the eight sous which were
the price of admission to the parterre ? An enormous sum,"
he said, looking at the children and watching them laugh.
"Signor Giovannone, director of the San Carlino, heard
me sing. I was sixteen. 'That child is a treasure,' he
said.

" ' Would you like me to engage you, my dear boy ? ' he
said.

" And how much will you give me ? '

" * Forty ducats a month.' That is one hundred and sixty

160 THE RED AND THE BLACK

francs, gentlemen. I thought the gates of heaven had
opened.

" ' But,' I said to Giovannone, ' how shall I get the strict
Zingarelli to let me go out ? '

" ' Lascia fare a me? "

" Leave it to me," exclaimed the eldest of the children.

" Quite right, my young sir. Signor Giovannone he says to
me, ' First sign this little piece of paper, my dear friend.' I
sign.

" He gives me three ducats. I had never seen so much
money. Then he told me what I had to do.

" Next day I asked the terrible Zingarelli for an audience.
His old valet ushered me in.

" ' What do you want of me, you naughty boy ? ' said
Zingarelli.

" ' Maestro,' I said, ' I repent of all my faults. I will never
go out of the Conservatoire by passing through the iron grill.
I will redouble my diligence.'

" ' If I were not frightened of spoiling the finest bass voice
I have ever heard, I would put you in prison for a fortnight
on bread and water, you rascal.'

" ' Maestro,' I answered, ' I will be the model boy of the
whole school, credete a me, but I would ask one favour of you.
If anyone comes and asks permission for me to sing outside,
refuse. As a favour, please say that you cannot let me.'

" ' And who the devil do you think is going to ask for a
ne'er-do-well like you ? Do you think I should ever allow you
to leave the Conservatoire? Do you want to make fun of
me ? Clear out ! Clear out ! ' he said, trying to give me a
kick, or look out for prison and dry bread.' "

One thing astonished Julien. The solitary weeks passed at
Verrieres in de Renal's house had been a period of happiness
for him. He had only experienced revulsions and sad thoughts
at the dinners to which he had been invited. And was he
not able to read, write and reflect, without being distracted, in
this solitary house ? He was not distracted every moment
from his brilliant reveries by the cruel necessity of studying
the movement of a false soul in order to deceive it by intrigue
and hypocrisy.

" To think of happiness being so near to me the
expense of a life like that is small enough. I could have my

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 161

choice of either marrying Mademoiselle Elisa or of entering
into partnership with Fouque. But it is only the traveller who
has just scaled a steep mountain and sits down on the summit
who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be happy
if he had to rest all the time ? "

Madame de Renal's mind had now reached a state of
desperation. In spite of her resolutions, she had explained to
Julien all the details of the auction. " He will make me
forget all my oaths ! " she thought.

She would have sacrificed her life without hesitation to save
that of her husband if she had seen him in danger. She was
one of those noble, romantic souls who find a source of
perpetual remorse equal to that occasioned by the actual
perpetration of a crime, in seeing the possibility of a generous
action and not doing it. None the less, there were deadly
days when she was not able to banish the imagination of the
excessive happiness which she would enjoy if she suddenly
became a widow, and were able to marry julien.

He loved her sons much more than their father did ; in spite
of his strict justice they were devoted to him. She quite
realised that if she married Julien, it would be necessary to
leave that Vergy, whose shades were so dear to her. She
pictured herself living at Paris, and continuing to give her
sons an education which would make them admired by every-
one. Her children, herself, and Julien ! They would be all
perfectly happy !

Strange result of marriage such as the nineteenth century
has made it ! The boredom of matrimonial life makes love
fade away inevitably, when love has preceded the marriage.
But none the less, said a philosopher, married life soon reduces
those people who are sufficiently rich not to have to work, to
a sense of being utterly bored by all quiet enjoyments. And
among women, it is only arid souls whom it does not pre-
dispose to love.

The philosopher's reflection makes me excuse Madame de
Renal, but she was not excused in Verrieres, and without her
suspecting it, the whole town found its sole topic of interest in
the scandal of her intrigue. As a result of this great affair,
the autumn was less boring than usual.

The autumn and part of the winter passed very quickly. It
was necessary to leave the woods of Vergy. Good Verrieres

ii

i6* THE RED AND THE BLACK

society began to be indignant at the fact that its anathemas
made so little impression on Monsieur de Renal. Within
eight days, several serious personages who made up for their
habitual gravity of demeanour by their pleasure in fulfilling
missions of this kind, gave him the most cruel suspicions, at
the same time utilising the most measured terms.

M. Valenod, who was playing a deep game, had placed Elisa
in an aristocratic family of great repute, where there were five
women. Elisa, fearing, so she said, not to find a place during
the winter, had only asked from this family about two-thirds of
what she had received in the house of the mayor. The girl
hit upon the excellent idea of going to confession at the same
time to both the old cure Chelan, and also to the new one, so
as to tell both of them in detail about Julien's amours.

The day after his arrival, the abbe Chelan summoned Julien
to him at six o'clock in the morning.

" I ask you nothing," he said. " I beg you, and if needs
be I insist, that you either leave for the Seminary of Besancon,
or for your friend Fouque, who is always ready to provide you
with a splendid future. I have seen to everything and have
arranged everything, but you must leave, and not come back
to Verrieres for a year."

Julien did not answer. He was considering whether his
honour ought to regard itself offended at the trouble which
Chelan, who, after all, was not his father, had taken on his
behalf.

" I shall have the honour of seeing you again to-morrow at
the same hour," he said finally to the cure.

Chelan, who reckoned on carrying so young a man by
storm, talked a great deal. Julien, cloaked in the most
complete humbleness, both of demeanour and expression, did
not open his lips.

Eventually he left, and ran to warn Madame de Renal
whom he found in despair. Her husband had just spoken to
her with a certain amount of frankness. The weakness of his
character found support in the prospect of the legacy, and had
decided him to treat her as perfectly innocent. He had just
confessed to her the strange state in which he had found
public opinion in Verrieres. The public was wrong ; it had
been misled by jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one
to do?

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 163

Madame de Renal was, for the moment, under the illusion
that Julien would accept the offer of Valenod and stay at
Verrieres. But she was no longer the simple, timid woman
that she had been the preceding year. Her fatal passion and
remorse had enlightened her. She soon realised the painful
truth (while at the same time she listened to her husband),
that at any rate a temporary separation had become essential.

When he is far from me, Julien will revert to those
ambitious projects which are so natural when one has no
money. And I, Great God ! I am so rich, and my riches
are so useless for my happiness. He will forget me. Love-
able as he is, he will be loved, and he will love. You unhappy
woman. What can I complain of ? Heaven is just. I was
not virtuous enough to leave off the crime. Fate robs me of
my judgment. I could easily have bribed Elisa if I had
wanted to ; nothing was easier. I did not take the trouble to
reflect for a moment. The mad imagination of love absorbed
all my time. I am ruined.

When Julien apprised Madame de Renal of the terrible
news of his departure, he was struck with one thing. He did
not find her put forward any selfish objections. She was
evidently making efforts not to cry.

"We have need of firmness, my dear." She cut off a
strand of her hair. " I do no know what I shall do," she
said to him, " but promise me if I die, never to forget my
children. Whether you are far or near, try to make them
into honest men. If there is a new revolution, all the nobles
will have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate,
because of that peasant on the roof who got killed. Watch
over my family. Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear.
These are our last moments. Having made this great sacrifice,
I hope I shall have the courage to consider my reputation in
public."

Julien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this
farewell touched him.

" No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this. I
will leave you now, as you yourself wish it. But three days
after my departure I will come back to see you at night."

Madame de Renal's life was changed. So Julien really
loved her, since of his own accord he had thought of seeing
her again. Her awful grief became changed into one of the

164 THE RED AND THE BLACK

keenest transports of joy which she had felt in her whole life.
Everything became easy for her. The certainty of seeing
her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy.
From that moment, both Madame de Renal's demeanour and
the expression of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly
dignified.

M. de Renal soon came back. He was beside himself.
He eventually mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter
which he had received two months before.

" I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it
has been sent by that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the
gutter and made into one of the richest tradesmen in Verrieres.
I will disgrace him publicly, and then I will fight him. This
is too much."

" Great Heavens ! I may become a widow," thought
Madame de Renal, and almost at the same time she said to
herself,

" If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be
the murderess of my own husband."

She had never expended so much skill in honoring his
vanity. Within two hours she made him see, and always by
virtue of reasons which he discovered himself, that it was
necessary to show more friendship than ever to M. Valenod,
and even to take Elisa back into the household.

Madame de Renal had need of courage to bring herself to
see again the girl who was the cause of her unhappiness.
But this idea was one of Julien's. Finally, having been put
on the track three or four times, M. de Renal arrived spon-
taneously at the conclusion, disagreeable though it was from
the financial standpoint, that the most painful thing that could
happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of the
effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrieres, should
stay in the town as the tutor of Valenod's children. It was
obviously to Julien's interest to accept the offer of the director
of the workhouse. Conversely, it was essential for M. de
Renal's prestige that Julien should leave Verrieres to enter the
seminary of Besancon or that of Dijon. But how to make
him decide on that course? And then how is he going to
live?

M. de Renal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the
distance, was in deeper despair than his wife. As for her,

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 165

she felt after this interview in the position of a man of spirit
who, tired of life, has taken a dose of stramonium. He only
acts mechanically so to speak, and takes no longer any interest
in anything. In this way, Louis XIV. came to say on his
deathbed, " When I was king." An admirable epigram.

Next morning, M. de Renal received quite early an anony-
mous letter. It was written in a most insulting style, and the
coarsest words applicable to his position occurred on every
line. It was the work of some jealous subordinate. This
letter made him think again of fighting a duel with Valenod.
Soon his courage went as far as the idea of immediate action.
He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and got some
pistols which he loaded.

" Yes, indeed," he said to himself, " even though the strict
administration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become
fashionable again, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery
to reproach myself with ; at the outside, I have shut my eyes,
and I have some good letters in my desk which authorise me
to do so.

Madame de Renal was terrified by her husband's cold anger.
It recalled to her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had
so much trouble in repelling. She closeted herself with him.
For several hours she talked to him in vain. The new anony-
mous letter had decided him. Finally she succeeded in trans-
forming the courage which had decided him to box Valenod's
ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to Julien,
which would keep him for one year in a seminary.

M. de Renal cursed a thousand times the day that he had
had the ill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and
forgot the anonymous letter.

He consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not
tell his wife. With the exercise of some skill, and by ex-
ploiting the romantic ideas of the young man, he hoped to be
able to induce him to refuse M. Valenod's offer at a cheaper
price.

Madame de Renal had much more trouble in proving to
Julien that inasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six
hundred francs a year in order to enable her husband to keep
up appearances, he need have no shame about accepting the
compensation. But Julien would say each time, " I have
never thought for a moment of accepting that offer. You

1 66 THE RED AND THE BLACK

have made me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of
those people would kill me."

Cruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand. His
pride gave him the illusion that he only accepted the sum
offered by M. de Renal as a loan, and induced him to give
him a promissory note, repayable in five years with interest.

Madame de Renal had, of course, many thousands of francs
which had been concealed in the little mountain cave.

She offered them to him all a tremble, feeling only too keenly
that they would be angrily refused.

" Do you wish," said Julien to her, " to make the memory
of our love loathsome ? "

Finally Julien left Verrieres. M. de Renal was very happy,
but when the fatal moment came to accept money from him
the sacrifice proved beyond Julien's strength. He refused
point blank. M. de Renal embraced him around the neck
with tears in his eyes. Julien had asked him for a testimonial
of good conduct, and his enthusiasm could find no terms
magnificent enough in which to extol his conduct.

Our hero had five louis of savings and he reckoned on ask-
ing Fouque for an equal sum.

He was very moved. But one league from Verrieres, where
he left so much that was dear to him, he only thought of the
happiness of seeing the capital of a great military town like
Besancon.

During the short absence of three days, Madame de Renal
was the victim of one of the cruellest deceptions to which love
is liable. Her life was tolerable, because between her and
extreme unhappiness there was still that last interview which
she was to have with Julien.

Finally during the night of the third day, she heard from
a distance the preconcerted signal. Julien, having passed
through a thousand dangers, appeared before her. In this
moment she only had one thought " I see him for the last
time." Instead of answering the endearments of her lover,
she seemed more dead than alive. If she forced herself
to tell him that she loved him, she said it with an em-
barrassed air which almost proved the contrary. Nothing
could rid her of the cruel idea of eternal separation.
The suspicious Julien thought for the moment that he was
already forgotten. His pointed remarks to this effect were

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL 167

only answered by great tears which flowed down in silence,
and by some hysterical pressings of the hand.

" But," Julien would answer his mistress's cold pro-
testations, " Great Heavens ! How can you expect me to
believe you? You would show one hundred times more
sincere affection to Madame Derville to a mere acquaintance."

Madame de Renal was petrified, and at a loss for an answer.

" It is impossible to be more unhappy. I hope I am going
to die. I feel my heart turn to ice."

Those were the longest answers which he could obtain.

When the approach of day rendered it necessary for him
to leave Madame de Renal, her tears completely ceased. She
saw him tie a knotted rope to the window without saying a
word, and without returning her kisses. It was in vain that
Julien said to her.

" So now we have reached the state of affairs which you
wished for so much. Henceforward you will live without
remorse. The slightest indisposition of your children will no
longer make you see them in the tomb."

" I am sorry that you cannot kiss Stanislas," she said
coldly.

Julien finished by being profoundly impressed by the cold
embraces of this living corpse. He could think of nothing
else for several leagues. His soul was overwhelmed, and
before passing the mountain, and while he could still see the
church tower of Verrieres he turned round frequently.

CHAPTER XXIV

A CAPITAL

What a noise, what busy people I What ideas for the future in a
brain of twenty ! What distraction offered by love. Barnave.

Finally he saw some black walls near a distant mountain. It
was the citadel of Besancon. " How different it would be for
me," he said with a sigh, " if I were arriving at this noble
military town to be sub-lieutenant in one of the regiments
entrusted with its defence." Besancon is not only one of the
prettiest towns in France, it abounds in people of spirit and
brains. But Julien was only a little peasant, and had no means
of approaching distinguished people.

He had taken a civilian suit at Fouque's, and it was in this
dress that he passed the drawbridge. Steeped as he was
in the history of the siege of 1674, he wished to see the
ramparts of the citadel before shutting himself up in the
seminary. He was within an ace two or three times of getting
himself arrested by the sentinel. He was penetrating into
places which military genius forbids the public to enter, in
order to sell twelve or fifteen francs worth of corn every year.

The height of the walls, the depth of the ditches, the terrible
aspect of the cannons had been engrossing him for several hours
when he passed before the great cafe on the boulevard. He
was motionless with wonder ; it was in vain that he read the
word caf, written in big characters above the two immense
doors. He could not believe his eyes. He made an effort
to overcome his timidity. He dared to enter, and found him-
self in a hall twenty or thirty yards long, and with a ceiling at
least twenty feet high. To-day, everything had a fascination
for him.

Two games of billiards were in progress. The waiters were
crying out the scores. The players ran round the tables en-

A CAPITAL 169

cumbered by spectators. Clouds of tobacco smoke came
from everybody's mouth, and enveloped them in a blue haze.
The high stature of these men, their rounded shoulders, their
heavy gait, their enormous whiskers, the long tailed coats
which covered them, everything combined to attract Julien's
attention. These noble childen of the antique Bisontium
only spoke at the top of their voice. They gave themselves
terrible martial airs. Julien stood still and admired them.
He kept thinking of the immensity and magnificence of a
great capital like Besancon. He felt absolutely devoid of the
requisite courage to ask one of those haughty looking gentle-
men, who were crying out the billiard scores, for a cup of
coffee.

But the young lady at the bar had noticed the charming
face of this young civilian from the country, who had stopped
three feet from the stove with his little parcel under his arm,
and was looking at the fine white plaster bust of the king.
This young lady, a big Franc-comtoise, very well made, and
dressed with the elegance suitable to the prestige of the cafe,
had already said two or three times in a little voice not in-
tended to be heard by any one except Julien, " Monsieur,
Monsieur." Julien's eyes encountered big blue eyes full of
tenderness, and saw that he was the person who was being
spoken to.

He sharply approached the bar and the pretty girl, as
though he had been marching towards the enemy. In this
great manoeuvre the parcel fell.

What pity will not our provincial inspire in the young lycee
scholars of Paris, who, at the early age of fifteen, know already
how to enter a cafe with so distinguished an air ? But these
children who have such style at fifteen turn commonplace at
eighteen. The impassioned timidity which is met with in the
provinces, sometimes manages to master its own nervousness,
and thus trains the will. " I must tell her the truth," thought
Julien, who was becoming courageous by dint of conquering
his timidity as he approached this pretty girl, who deigned
to address him.

" Madame, this is the first time in my life that I have come
to Besancon. I should like to have some bread and a cup of
coffee in return for payment."

The young lady smiled a little, and then blushed. She

170 THE RED AND THE BLACK

feared the ironic attention and the jests of the billiard players
might be turned against this pretty young man. He would
be frightened and would not appear there again.

" Sit here near me," she said to him, showing him a marble
table almost completely hidden by the enormous mahogany
counter which extended into the hall.

The young lady leant over the counter, and had thus an
opportunity of displaying a superb figure. Julien noticed it.
All his ideas changed. The pretty young lady had just placed
before him a cup, some sugar, and a little roll. She hesitated
to call a waiter for the coffee, as she realised that his arrival
would put an end to her tete-a-tete with Jul en

Julien was pensively comparing this blonde and merry
beauty with certain memories which would often thrill him.
The thought of the passion of which he had been the object,
nearly freed him from all his timidity. The pretty young
woman had only one moment to save the situation. She read
it in Julien's looks.

"This pipe smoke makes you cough; come and have
breakfast to-morrow before eight o'clock in the morning. I
am practically alone then."

" What is your name ? " said Julien, with the caressing smile
of happy timidity.

"Amanda Binet."

"Will you allow me to send you within an hour's time a
little parcel about as big as this ? "

The beautiful Amanda reflected a little.

" I am watched. What you ask may compromise me. All
the same, I will write my address on a card, which you will
put on your parcel. Send it boldly to me."

" My name is Julien Sorel," said the young man. " I have
neither relatives nor acquaintances at Besancon."

" Ah, I understand," she said joyfully. " You come to
study law."

" Alas, no," answered Julien, " I am being sent to the
Seminary."

The most complete discouragement damped Amanda's
features. She called a waiter. She had courage now. The
waiter poured out some coffee for Julien without looking
at him.

Amanda was receiving money at the counter. Julien was

A CAPITAL 171

proud of having dared to speak : a dispute was going on at
one of the billiard tables. The cries and the protests of the
players resounded over the immense hall, and made a din
which astonished Julien. Amanda was dreamy, and kept her
eyes lowered.

" If you like, Mademoiselle," he said to her suddenly with
assurance, " I will say that I am your cousin."

This little air of authority pleased Amanda. " He's not a
mere nobody," she thought. She spoke to him very quickly,
without looking at him, because her eye was occupied in seeing
if anybody was coming near the counter.

" I come from Genlis, near Dijon. Say that you are also
from Genlis and are my mother's cousin."

" I shall not fail to do so."

" All the gentlemen who go to the Seminary pass here before
the cafe every Thursday in the summer at five o'clock."

" If you think of me when I am passing, have a bunch of
violets in your hand."

Amanda looked at him with an astonished air. This look
changed Julien's courage into audacity. Nevertheless, he
reddened considerably, as he said to her. " I feel that I love
you with the most violent love."

" Speak in lower tones," she said to him with a frightened
air.

Julien was trying to recollect phrases out of a volume of
the Nouvelle Heloise which he had found at Vergy. His
memory served him in good stead. For ten minutes he
recited the Nouville Heloise to the delighted Mademoiselle
Amanda. He was happy on the strength of his own bravery,
when suddenly the beautiful Franc-contoise assumed an icy
air. One of her lovers had appeared at the cafe door. He
approached the bar, whistling, and swaggering his shoulders.
He looked at Julien. The latter's imagination, which always
indulged in extremes, suddenly brimmed over with ideas of a
duel. He paled greatly, put down his cup, assumed an assured
demeanour, and considered his rival very attentively. As
this rival lowered his head, while he familiarly poured out on
the counter a glass of brandy for himself, Amanda ordered
Julien with a look to lower his eyes. He obeyed, and for two
minutes kept motionless in his place, pale, resolute, and only
j-hinking of what was going to happen. He was truly happy

172 THE RED AND THE BLACK

at this moment. The rival had been astonished by Julien's
eyes. Gulping down his glass of brandy, he said a few words
to Amanda, placed his two hands in the pockets of his big
tail coat, and approached the billiard table, whistling, and
looking at Julien. The latter got up transported with rage,
but he did not know what to do in order to be offensive. He
put down his little parcel, and walked towards the billiard
table with all the swagger he could muster.

It was in vain that prudence said to him, " but your
ecclesiastical career will be ruined by a duel immediately on
top of your arrival at Besancon."

"What does it matter. It shall never be said that I let
an insolent fellow go scot free."

Amanda saw his courage. It contrasted prettily with the
simplicity of his manners. She instantly preferred him to
the big young man with the tail coat. She got up, and while
appearing to be following with her eye somebody who was
passing in the street, she went and quickly placed herself
between him and the billiard table.

" Take care not to look askance at that gentleman. He is
my brother-in-law."

" What does it matter ? He looked at me."

" Do you want to make me unhappy ? No doubt he
looked at you, why it may be he is going to speak to you. I
told him that you were a relative of my mother, and that you
had arrived from Genlis. He is a Franc-contois, and has
never gone beyond Ddleon the Burgundy Road, so say what
you like and fear nothing."

Julien was still hesitating. Her barmaid's imagination
furnished her with an abundance of lies, and she quickly
added.

" No doubt he looked at you, but it was at a moment when
he was asking me who you were. He is a man who is
boorish with everyone. He did not mean to insult you."

Julien's eye followed the pretended brother-in-law. He
saw him buy a ticket for the pool, which they were playing at
the further of the two billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice
shouting out in a threatening tone, " My turn to play."

He passed sharply before Madame Amanda, and took a step
towards the billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.

" Come and pay me first," she said to him.

A CAPITAL 173

" That is right," thought Julien. " She is frightened that
I shall leave without paying." Amanda was as agitated as he
was, and very red. She gave him the change as slowly as she
could, while she repeated to him, in a low voice,

" Leave the cafe this instant, or I shall love you no more,
and yet I do love you very much."

Julien did go out, but slowly. " Am I not in duty bound,
he repeated to himself, to go and stare at that coarse person
in my turn ? " This uncertainty kept him on the boulevard in
the front of the cafe for an hour ; he kept looking if his man
was coming out. He did not come out, and Julien went
away.

He had only been at Besancon some hours, and already he
had overcome one pang of remorse. The old surgeon-major
had formerly given him some fencing lessons, in spite of his
gout. That was all the science which Julien could enlist in
the service of his anger. But this embarrassment would have
been nothing if he had only known how to vent his temper
otherwise than by the giving of a blow, for if it had come to
a matter of fisticuffs, his enormous rival would have beaten
him and then cleared out.

" There is not much difference between a seminary and a
prison," said Julien to himself, "for a poor devil like me,
without protectors and without money. I must leave my
civilian clothes in some inn, where I can put my black suit
on again. If I ever manage to get out of the seminary for a
few hours, I shall be able to see Mdlle. Amanda again in my
lay clothes. This reasoning was all very fine. Though
Julien passed in front of all the inns, he did not dare to enter
a single one.

Finally, as he was passing again before the Hotel des
Ambassadeurs, his anxious eyes encountered those of a big
woman, still fairly young, with a high colour, and a gay and
happy air. He approached her and told his story.

" Certainly, my pretty little abbe," said the hostess of the
Ambassadeurs to him, " I will keep your lay clothes for you,
and I will even have them regularly brushed. In weather like
this, it is not good to leave a suit of cloth without touching
it." She took a key, and conducted him herself to a room,
and advised him to make out a note of what he was leaving.

" Good heavens. How well you look like that, M. the abbe

*74 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Sorel," said the big woman to him when he came down to
the kitchen. I will go and get a good dinner served up to
you, and she added in a low voice, " It will only cost twenty
sous instead of the fifty which everybody else pays, for one
must really take care of your little purse strings."

" I have ten louis," Julien replied with certain pride.

"Oh, great heavens," answered the good hostess in alarm.
" Don't talk so loud, there are quite a lot of bad characters in
Besancon. They'll steal all that from you in less than no time,
and above all, never go into the cafes, they are filled with
bad characters."

" Indeed," said Julien, to whom those words gave food for
thought.

" Don't go anywhere else, except to my place. I will
make coffee for you. Remember that you will always find
a friend here, and a good dinner for twenty sous. So now
you understand, I hope. Go and sit down at table, I will
serve you myself."

" I shan't be able to eat," said Julien to her. " I am too
upset. I am going to enter the seminary, as I leave you."
The good woman, would not allow him to leave before she
had filled his pockets with provisions. Finally Julien took
his road towards the terrible place. The hostess was standing
at the threshold, and showed him the way.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SEMINARY

Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at eighty-five
centimes. Three hundred and thirty-six suppers at fifty-
centimes. Chocolate to those who are entitled to it.
How much profit can be made on the contract?
Valtnod of Besaticon.

He saw in the distance the iron gilt cross on the door. He
approached slowly. His legs seemed to give way beneath
him. " So here is this hell upon earth which I shall be unable
to leave."

Finally he made up his mind to ring. The noise of the
bell reverberated as though through a solitude. At the end of
ten minutes a pale man, clothed in black, came and opened the
door. Julien looked at him, and immediately lowered his
eyes. This porter had a singular physiognomy. The green
projecting pupils of his eyes were as round as those of a cat.
The straight lines of his eyebrows betokened the impossibility
of any sympathy. His thin lips came round in a semicircle
over projecting teeth. None the less, his physiognomy did
not so much betoken crime as rather that perfect callousness
which is so much more terrifying to the young. The one
sentiment which Julien's rapid gaze surmised in this long and
devout face was a profound contempt for every topic of
conversation which did not deal with things celestial. Julien
raised his eyes with an effort, and in a voice rendered quavering
by the beating of his heart explained that he desired to
speak to M. Pirard, the director of the Seminary. Without
saying a word the man in black signed to him to follow.
They ascended two stories by a large staircase with a wooden
rail, whose warped stairs inclined to the side opposite the wall,
and seemed on the point of falling. A little door with a big

176 THE RED AND THE BLACK

cemetery cross of white wood painted black at the top was
opened with difficulty, and the porter made him enter a dark
low room, whose whitewashed walls were decorated with two
big pictures blackened by age. In this room Julien was left
alone. He was overwhelmed. His heart was beating
violently. He would have been happy to have ventured to
cry. A silence of death reigned over the whole house.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed a whole
day to him, the sinister looking porter reappeared on the
threshold of a door at the other end of the room, and without
vouchsafing a word, signed to him to advance. He entered
into a room even larger than the first, and very badly lighted.
The walls also were whitened, but there was no furniture.
Only in a corner near the door Julien saw as he passed a
white wooden bed, two straw chairs, and a little pinewood
armchair without any cushions. He perceived at the other
end of the room, near a small window with yellow panes
decorated with badly kept flower vases, a man seated at a
table, and covered with a dilapidated cassock. He appeared
to be in a temper, and took one after the other a number of
little squares of paper, which he arranged on his table after
he had written some words on them. He did not notice
Julien's presence. The latter did not move, but kept
standing near the centre of the room in the place where the
porter, who had gone out and shut the door, had left him.

Ten minutes passed in this way : the badly dressed man
kept on writing all the time. Julien's emotion and terror
were so great that he thought he was on the point of falling.
A philosopher would have said, possibly wrongly, " It is a
violent impression made by ugliness on a soul intended by
nature to love the beautiful."

The man who was writing lifted up his head. Julien
only perceived it after a moment had passed, and even after
seeing it, he still remained motionless, as though struck dead
by the terrible look of which he was the victim. Julien's
troubled eyes just managed to make out a long face, all
covered with red blotches except the forehead, which mani-
fested a mortal pallor. Two little black eyes, calculated
to terrify the most courageous, shone between these red
cheeks and that white forehead. The vast area of his forehead
was bounded by thick, fiat, jet black hair.

THE SEMINARY 177

" Will you come near, yes or no ? " said the man at last,
impatiently.

Julien advanced with an uneasy step, and at last, paler
than he had ever been in his life and on the point of falling,
stopped three paces from the little white wooden table which
was covered with the squares of paper.

" Nearer," said the man.

Julien advanced still further, holding out his hand, as
though trying to lean on something.

" Your name ? "

" Julien Sorel."

" Vou are certainly very late," said the man to him, as he
rivetted again on him that terrible gaze.

Julien could not endure this look. Holding out his hand as
though to support himself, he fell all his length along the floor.

The man rang. Julien had only lost the use of his eyes
and the power of movement. He heard steps approaching.

He was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white
wood. He heard the terrible man saying to the porter,

" He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the
finishing touch."

When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the
red face was going on with his writing. The porter had
disappeared. " I must have courage," said our hero to
himself, "and above all, hide what I feel." He felt violently
sick. "If anything happens to me, God knows what they
will think of me."

Finally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.

" Are you in a fit state to answer me ? "

" Yes, sir," said Julien in an enfeebled voice.

" Ah, that's fortunate."

The man in black had half got up, and was looking
impatiently for a letter in the drawer of his pinewood table,
which opened with a grind. He found it, sat down slowly,
and looking again at Julien in a manner calculated to suck
out of him the little life which he still possessed, said,

" You have been recommended to me by M. Chelan. He
was the best cure in the diocese ; he was an upright man if
there ever was one, and my friend for thirty years."

" Oh. It's to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of
speaking ? " said Julien in a dying voice.

12

178 THE RED AND THE BLACK

"Apparently," replied the director of the seminary, as he
looked at him disagreeably.

The glitter of his little eyes doubled and was followed by an
involuntary movement of the muscles of the corner of the
mouth. It was the physiognomy of the tiger savouring in
advance the pleasure of devouring its prey.

" Chelan's letter is short," he said, as though speaking to
himself. " Intelligenti pauca. In the present time it is
impossible to write too little." He read aloud :

" I recommend to you Julien Sorel of this parish, whom I
baptized nearly twenty years ago, the son of a rich carpenter who
gives him nothing. Julien will be a remarkable worker in the
vineyard of the Lord. He lacks neither memory nor intelligence :
he has some faculty for reflection. Will he persevere in his
calling? Is he sincere?"

"Sincere," repeated the abbe Pirard with an astonished air,
looking at Julien. But the abbe's look was already less
devoid of all humanity. " Sincere," he repeated, lowering his
voice, and resuming his reading :

" I ask you for a stipend for Julien Sorel. He will earn it by
passing the necessary examinations. I have taught him a little
theology, that old and good theology of the Bossuets, the Arnaults,
and the Fleury's. If the person does not suit you, send him back
to me. The director of the workhouse, whom you know well,
offers him eight hundred to be tutor to his children. My inner
self is tranquil, thanks to God. I am accustoming myself to the
terrible blow, ' Vale et me ama.' "

The abbe Pirard, speaking more slowly as he read the
signature, pronounced with a sigh the word, " Chelan."

" He is tranquil," he said, " in fact his righteousness
deserves such a recompense. May God grant it to me in such
a case." He looked up to heaven and made the sign of the
cross. At the sight of that sacred sign Julien felt an alleviation
of the profound horror which had frozen him since his entry
into the house.

" I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for
the most holy state," said the abbe Pirard at last, in a tone,
which though severe, was not malicious ; only seven or eight
have been recommended to me by such men as the abbe
Chelan ; so you will be the ninth of these among the three

THE SEMINARY 179

hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither
favour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled
severity against vice. Go and lock that door."

Julian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall.
He noticed that a little window near the entrance door looked
out on to the country. He saw the trees ; that sight did him
as much good as the sight of old friends.

" ' Loquerisne linquam latinam ? '" (Do you speak Latin?)
said the abbe Pirard to him as he came back.

" Ita, pater optime,' " (Yes, excellent Father) answered
Julien, recovering himself a little. But it was certain that
nobody in the world had ever appeared to him less excellent
than had M. Pirard for the last half hour.

The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in
the abbe's eyes softened. Julien regained some self-
possession. " How weak I am," he thought, " to let myself
be imposed on by these appearances of virtue. The man is
probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon," and
Julien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his
money in his boots.

The abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology ; he was
surprised at the extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment
increased when he questioned him in particular on sacred
scriptures. ' But when it came to questions of the doctrines of
the Fathers, he perceived that Julien scarcely even knew the
names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint Bonaventure,
Saint Basile, etc., etc.

"As a matter of fact," thought the abbe Pirard, "this is
simply that fatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have
always reproached Chelan. A profound, and only too
profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."

(Julien had just started speaking to him, without being
questioned on the point, about the real time when Genesis, the
Pentateuch, etc., has been written).

" To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy
Scriptures lead to ? " thought the abbe Pirard, " if not to
self-examination, that is to say, the most awful Protestantism.
And by the side of this imprudent knowledge, nothing about
the Fathers to compensate for that tendency."

But the astonishment of the director of the seminary was
quite unbounded when having questioned Julien about the

180 THE RED AND THE BLACK

authority of the Pope, and expecting to hear the maxims of
the ancient Gallican Church, the young man recited to him
the whole book of M. de Maistre " Strange man, that
Chelan," thought the abbe Pirard. " Did he show him the
book simply to teach him to make fun of it ? "

It was in vain that he questioned Julien and endeavoured
to guess if he seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de
Maistre. The young man only answered what he had learnt
by heart. From this moment Julien was really happy. He
felt that he was master of himself. After a very long examina-
tion, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him
was only affected. Indeed, the director of the seminary
would have embraced Julien in the name of logic, for he
found so much clearness, precision and lucidity in his
answers, had it not been for the principles of austere gravity
towards his theology pupils which he had inculcated in himself
for the last fifteen years.

"Here we have a bold and healthy mind," he said to
himself, " but corpus debile " (the body is weak).

" Do you often fall like that ? " he said to Julien in French,
pointing with his finger to the floor.

" It's the first time in my life. The porter's face unnerved
me," added Julien, blushing like a child. The abbe Pirard
almost smiled.

"That's the result of vain worldly pomp. You are
apparently accustomed to smiling faces, those veritable
theatres of falsehood. Truth is austere, Monsieur, but is not our
task down here also austere ? You must be careful that your
conscience guards against that weakness of yours, too much
sensibility to vain external graces."

" If you had not been recommended to me," said the
abbe Pirard, resuming the Latin language with an obvious
pleasure, " If you had not been recommended by a man, by
the abbe Chelan, I would talk to you the vain language of
that world, to which it would appear you are only too well
accustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which
you solicit is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain.
But the fifty-six years which the abbe Chelan has spent in
apostolic work have stood him in poor stead if he cannot
dispose of a stipend at the seminary.

After these words, the abbee Pirard recommended Julien

THE SEMINARY 181

not to enter any secret society or congregation without his
consent.

" I give you my word of honour," said Julien, with all
an honest man's expansion of heart. The director of the
seminary smiled for the first time.

" That expression is not used here," he said to him. " It is
too reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which
leads them to so many errors and often to so many crimes.
You owe me obedience by virtue of paragraph seventeen of
the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the Fifth. I am your
ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my dear son, is
to obey. How much money, have you ? "

("So here we are," said Julien to himself, "that was the
reason of the ' my very dear son ')."

" Thirty-five francs, my father."

" Write out carefully how you use that money. You will
have to give me an account of it."

This painful audience had lasted three hours. Julien
summoned the porter.

" Go and install Julien Sorel in cell No. 103," said the abbe
Pirard to the man.

As a great favour he let Julien have a place all to himself.
" Carry his box there," he added.

Julien lowered his eyes, and recognised his box just in
front of him. He had been looking at it for three hours and
had not recognised it.

As he arrived at No. 103, which was a little room
eight feet square on the top story of the house, Julien noticed
that it looked out on to the ramparts, and he perceived
beyond them the pretty plain which the Doubs divides from
the town.

"What a charming view !" exclaimed Julien. In speaking
like this he did not feel what the words actually expressed. The
violent sensations which he had experienced during the short
time that he had been at Besanc_on had absolutely exhausted
his strength. He sat down near the window on the one
wooden chair in the cell, and fell at once into a profound
sleep. He did not hear either the supper bell or the bell for
benediction. They had forgotten him. When the first rays
of the sun woke him up the following morning, he found
himself lying on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK

I am alone in the world. No one deigns to spare me a thought.
All those whom I see make their fortune, have an insolence and
hardness of heart which I do not feel in myself. They hate me
by reason of kindness and good-humour. Oh, I shall die soon,
either from starvation or the unhappiness of seeing men so hard of
heart. Young.

He hastened to brush his clothes and run down. He was
late. Instead of trying to justify himself Julien crossed his
arms over his breast.

" Peccavi pater optime (I have sinned, I confess my fault,
oh, my father)," he said with a contrite air.

This first speech was a great success. The clever ones
among the seminarists saw that they had to deal with a man
who knew something about the elements of the profession. The
recreation hour arrived, and Julien saw that he was the object
of general curiosity, but he only manifested reserved silence.
Following the maxims he had laid down for himself, he
considered his three hundred and twenty-one comrades as
enemies. The most dangerous of all in his eyes was the
abbe Pirard. A few days afterwards Julien had to choose a
confessor, and was given a list.

" Great heavens ! what do they take me for ? " he said to
himself. " Do they think I don't understand what's what ? "
Then he chose the abbe Pirard.

This step proved decisive without his suspecting it.

A little seminarist, who was quite young and a native of
Verrieres, and who had declared himself his friend since the
first day, informed him that he would probably have acted
more prudently if he had chosen M. Castanede, the sub-
director of the seminary

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK 183

"The abbe Castanede is the enemy of Pirard, who is
suspected of Jansenism," added the little seminarist in a
whisper. All the first steps of our hero were, in spite of the
prudence on which he plumed himself, as much mistakes as
his choice of a confessor. Misled as he was by all the self-
confidence of a man of imagination, he took his projects for
facts, and believed that he was a consummate hypocrite. His
folly went so far as to reproach himself for his success in this
kind of weakness.

" Alas, it is my only weapon," he said to himself. " At
another period I should have earned my livelihood by eloquent
deeds in the face of the enemy."

Satisfied as he was with his own conduct, Julien looked
around him. He found everywhere the appearance of the
purest virtue.

Eight or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and
had visions like Saint Theresa, and Saint Francis, when he
received his stigmata on Mount Vernia in the Appenines.
But it was a great secret and their friends concealed it. These
poor young people who had visions were always in the in-
firmary. A hundred others combined an indefatigable applica-
tion to a robust faith. They worked till they fell ill, but
without learning much. Two or three were distinguished by
a real talent, amongst others a student of the name of Chazel,
but both they and Julien felt mutually unsympathetic.

The rest of these three hundred and twenty-one seminarists
consisted exclusively of coarse persons, who were by no means
sure of understanding the Latin words which they kept on
repeating the livelong day. Nearly all were the sons of
peasants, and they preferred to gain their livelihood by reciting
some Latin words than by ploughing the earth. It was after
this examination of his colleagues that Julien, during the first
few days, promised himself a speedy success.

" Intelligent people are needed in every service," he said to
himself, " for, after all, there is work to be done. I should
have been a sergeant under Napoleon. I shall be a grand
vicar among these future cures."

" All these poor devils," he added, " manual labourers as
they have been since their childhood, have lived on curded
milk and black bread up till they arrived here. They would
only eat meat five or six times a year in their hovels. Like

i8 4 THE RED AND THE BLACK

the Roman soldiers who used to find war the time of rest, these
poor peasants are enchanted with the delights of the seminary.

Julien could never read anything in their gloomy eyes but
the satisfaction of physical craving after dinner, and the ex-
pectation of sensual pleasure before the meal. Such were the
people among whom Julien had to distinguish himself; but
the fact which he did not know, and which they refrained
from telling him, was that coming out first in the different
courses of dogma, ecclesiastical history, etc., etc., which are
taken at the seminary, constituted in their eyes, neither more
nor less than a splendid sin.

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government,
which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examina-
tion, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being
suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that
books are its real enemies. It is the submissive heart which
counts for everything in its eyes. It suspects, and rightly so,
any success in studies, even sacred ones. What is to prevent
a superior man from crossing over to the opposite side like
Sieyes or Gregory. The trembling Church clings on to the
Pope as its one chance of safety. The Pope alone is in a
position to attempt to paralyse all personal self-examination,
and to make an impression by means of the pompous piety
of his court ceremonial on the bored and morbid spirit of
fashionable society.

Julien, as he began to get some glimpse of these various
truths, which are none the less in total contradiction to all
the official pronouncements of any seminary, fell into a profound
melancholy. He worked a great deal and rapidly succeeded
in learning things which were extremely useful to a priest,
extremely false in his own eyes, and devoid of the slightest
interest for him. He felt there was nothing else to do.

" Am I then forgotten by the whole world," he thought.
He did not know that M. Pirard had received and thrown into
the fire several letters with the Dijon stamp in which the most
lively passion would pierce through the most formal con-
ventionalism of style. " This love seems to be fought by great
attacks of remorse. All the better," thought the abbe Pirard.
" At any rate this lad has not loved an infidel woman."

One day the abbe Pirard opened a letter which seemed
half-blotted out by tears. It was an adieu for ever. " At

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK 185

last," said the writer to Julien, " Heaven has granted me the
grace of hating, not the author of my fall, but my fall itself.
The sacrifice has been made, dear one, not without tears as
you see. The safety of those to whom I must devote my life,
and whom you love so much, is the decisive factor. A just
but terrible God will no longer see His way to avenge on them
their mother's crimes. Adieu, Julien. Be just towards all
men." The end of the letter was nearly entirely illegible.
The writer gave an address at Dijon, but at the same time
expressed the hope that Julien would not answer, or at any
rate would employ language which a reformed woman could
read without blushing. Julien's melancholy, aggravated by
the mediocre nourishment which the contractor who gave
dinners at thirteen centimes per head supplied to the seminary,
began to affect his health, when Fouque suddenly appeared in
his room one morning.

" I have been able to get in at last. I have duly been five
times to Besancon in order to see you. Could never get in.
I put someone by the door to watch. Why the devil don't
you ever go out ? "

" It is a test which I have imposed on myself."

" I find you greatly changed, but here you are again. I
have just learned from a couple of good five franc pieces that
I was only a fool not to have offered them on my first journey."

The conversation of the two friends went on for ever.
Julien changed coloured when Fouque said to him,

" Do you know, by the by, that your pupils' mother has
become positively devout."

And he began to talk in that off-hand manner which makes
so singular an impression on the passionate soul, whose dearest
interests are being destroyed without the speaker having the
faintest suspicion of it.

" Yes, my friend, the most exalted devoutness. She is said
to make pilgrimages. But to the eternal shame of the abbe
Maslon, who has played the spy so long on that poor M.
Chelan, Madame de Renal would have nothing to do with
him. She goes to confession to Dijon or Besancon."

" She goes to Besancon," said Julien, flushing all over his
forehead.

" Pretty often," said Fouque in a questioning manner.

" Have you got any Constitutionnels on you ? "

186 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" What do you say ? " replied Fouque.

" I'm asking if you've got any Constitutionnels ? " went on
Julien in the quietest tone imaginable. "They cost thirty
sous a number here."

" What ! " exclaimed Fouque. " Liberals even in the
seminary ! Poor France," he added, assuming the abbe
Maslon's hypocritical voice and sugary tone.

This visit would have made a deep impression on our hero,
if he had not been put on the track of an important discovery
by some words addressed to him the following day by the little
seminarist from Verrieres. Julien's conduct since he had been
at the seminary had been nothing but a series of false steps.
He began to make bitter fun of himself.

In point of fact the important actions in his life had been
cleverly managed, but he was careless about details, and
cleverness in a seminary consists in attention to details.
Consequently, he had already the reputation among his
comrades of being a strong-minded person. He had been
betrayed by a number of little actions.

He had been convicted in their eyes of this enormity, he
thought and judged for himself instead of blindly following
authority and example. The abbe Pirard had been no help
to him. He had not spoken to him on a single occasion
apart from the confessional, and even there he listened more
than he spoke. Matters would have been very different if he
had chosen the abbe Castanede. The moment that Julien
realised his folly, he ceased to be bored. He wished to know
the whole extent of the evil, and to effect this emerged a little
from that haughty obstinate silence with which he had
scrupulously rebuffed his comrades. It was now that they
took their revenge on him. His advances were welcomed by
a contempt verging on derision. He realised that there had
not been one single hour from the time of his entry into the
seminary, particularly during recreation time, which had not
resulted in affecting him one way or another, which had not
increased the number of his enemies, or won for him the
goodwill of some seminarist who was either sincerely virtuous
or of a fibre slightly less coarse than that of the others. The
evil to repair was infinite, and the task very difficult. Hence-
forth, Julien's attention was always on guard. The problem
before him was to map out a new character for himself.

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK 187

The moving of his eyes for example, occasioned him a great
deal of trouble. It is with good reason that they are carried
lowered in these places.

" How presumptuous I was at Verrieres," said Julien to
himself. " I thought I lived ; I was only preparing for life,
and here I am at last in the world such as I shall find it, until
my part comes to an end, surrounded by real enemies. What
immense difficulties," he added, "are involved in keeping up
this hypocrisy every single minute. It is enough to put the
labours of Hercules into the shade. The Hercules of modern
times is the Pope Sixtus Quintus, who deceived by his modesty
fifteen years on end forty Cardinals who had seen the liveliness
and haughtiness of his whole youth.

"So knowledge is nothing here," he said to himself with
disgust. " Progress in doctrine, in sacred history, etc., only
seem to count. Everything said on those subjects is only
intended to entrap fools like me. Alas my only merit consists
in my rapid progress, and in the way in which I grasp all
their nonsense. Do they really value those things at their
true worth? Do they judge them like I do. And I had
the stupidity to be proud of my quickness. The only result
of my coming out top has been to give me inveterate enemies.
Chazel, who really knows more than I do, always throws
some blunder in his compositions which gets him put back to
the fiftieth place. If he comes out first, it is only because he
is absent-minded. O how useful would one word, just one
word, of M. Pirard, have been to me."

As soon as Julien was disillusioned, the long exercises in
ascetic piety, such as the attendances in the chapel five times
a week, the intonation of hymns at the chapel of the Sacre
Coeur, etc , etc., which had previously seemed to him so
deadly boring, became his most interesting opportunities for
action. Thanks to a severe introspection, and above all, by
trying not to overdo his methods, Julien did not attempt at
the outset to perform significant actions (that is to say, actions
which are proof of a certain Christian perfection) like those
seminarists who served as a model to the rest.

Seminarists have a special way, even of eating a poached
egg, which betokens progress in the devout life.

The reader who smiles at this will perhaps be good enough
to remember all the mistakes which the abbe Delille made

188 THE RED AND THE BLACK

over the eating of an egg when he was invited to breakfast
with a lady of the Court of Louis XVI.

Julien first tried to arrive at the state of non culpa, that is
to say the state of the young seminarist whose demeanour and
manner of moving his arms, eyes, etc. while in fact without
any trace of worldliness, do not yet indicate that the person is
entirely absorbed by the conception of the other world, and
the idea of the pure nothingness of this one.

Julien incessantly found such phrases as these charcoaled
on the walls of the corridors. " What are sixty years of ordeals
balanced against an eternity of delights or any eternity of
boiling oil in hell ? " He despised them no longer. He
realised that it was necessary to have them incessantly before
his eyes. " What am I going to do all my life," he said to
himself. " I shall sell to the faithful a place in heaven.
How am I going to make that place visible to their eyes ? By
the difference between my appearance and that of a layman."

After several months of absolutely unremitting application,
Julien still had the appearance of thinking. The way in
which he would move his eyes and hold his mouth did not
betoken that implicit faith which is ready to believe everything
and undergo everything, even at the cost of martyrdom.
Julien saw with anger that he was surpassed in this by the
coarsest peasants. There was good reason for their not
appearing full of thought.

What pains did he not take to acquire that facial expression
of blindly fervent faith which is found so frequently in the
Italian convents, and of which Le Guerchin has left such
perfect models in his Church pictures for the benefit of us
laymen.

On feast-days, the seminarists were regaled with sausages
and cabbage. Julien's table neighbours observed that he did
not appreciate this happiness. That was looked upon as one
of his paramount crimes. His comrades saw in this a most
odious trait, and the most foolish hypocrisy. Nothing mad
him more enemies.

" Look at this bourgeois, look at this stuck-up person,"
they would say, " who pretends to despise the best rations
there are, sausages and cabbage, shame on the villain !
The haughty wretch, he is damned for ever."

"Alas, these young peasants, who are my comrades, find

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK 189

their ignorance an immense advantage," Julien would exclaim
in his moments of discouragement. The professor has not
got to deliver them on their arrival at the seminary from that
awful number of worldly ideas which I brought into it, and
which they read on my face whatever I do."

Julien watched with an attention bordering on envy the
coarsest of the little peasants who arrived at the seminary.
From the moment when they were made to doff their shabby
jackets to don the black robe, their education consisted of an
immense and limitless respect for hard liquid cash as they say
in Franche-comte.

That is the consecrated and heroic way of expressing the
sublime idea of current money.

These seminarists, like the heroes in Voltaire's novels,
found their happiness in dining well. Julien discovered in
nearly all of them an innate respect for the man who wears a
suit of good cloth. This sentiment appreciates the distributive
justice, which is given us at our courts, at its value or even above
its true value. " What can one gain," they would often repeat
among themselves, " by having a law suit with ' a big man ? ' "

That is the expression current in the valleys of the Jura to
express a rich man. One can judge of their respect for the
richest entity of all the government. Failure to smile
deferentially at the mere name of M. the Prefect is regarded
as an imprudence in the eyes of the Franche-comte peasant,
and imprudence in poor people is quickly punished by lack
of bread.

After having been almost suffocated at first by his feeling of
contempt, Julien eventually experienced a feeling of pity ; it
often happened that the fathers of most of his comrades
would enter their hovel in winter evenings and fail to find
there either bread, chestnuts or potatoes.

" What is there astonishing then ? " Julien would say to
himself, " if in their eyes the happy man is in the first place
the one who has just had a good dinner, and in the second
place the one who possesses a good suit ? My comrades have
a lasting vocation, that is to say, they see in the ecclesiastical
calling a long continuance of the happiness of dining well and
having a warm suit."

Julien happened to hear ayoung imaginative seminarist say
to his companion.

i 9 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

"Why shouldn't I become Pope like Sixtus Quintus who
kept pigs ? "

"They only make Italians Popes," answered his friend.
" But they will certainly draw lots amongst us for the great

vicarships, canonries and perhaps bishoprics. M. P

Bishop of Chlons, is the son of a cooper. That's what my
father is."

One day, in the middle of a theology lesson, the Abbe
Pirard summoned Julien to him. The young fellow was
delighted to leave the dark, moral atmosphere in which he
had been plunged. Julien received from the director the
same welcome which had frightened him so much on the first
day of his entry.

" Explain to me what is written on this playing card ? " he
said, looking at him in a way calculated to make him sink into
the earth.

Julien read :

"Amanda Biriet of the Giraffe Cafe before eight o'clock.
Say you're from Genlis, and my mother's cousin."

Julien realised the immense danger. The spies of the abbe
Castanede had stolen the address.

" I was trembling with fear the day I came here," he
answered, looking at the abbe Pirard's forehead, for he could
not endure that terrible gaze. " M. Chelan told me that this
is a place of informers and mischief-makers of all kinds, and
that spying and tale-bearing by one comrade on another was
encouraged by the authorities. Heaven wishes it to be so,
so as to show life such as it is to the young priests, and fill
them with disgust for the world and all its pomps."

" And it's to me that you make these fine speeches," said
the abbe Pirard furiously. " You young villain."

" My brothers used to beat me at Verrieres," answered
Julien coldly, " When they had occasion to be jealous of me."

" Indeed, indeed," exclaimed M. Pirard, almost beside
himself.

Julien went on with his story without being in the least
intimidated :

"The day of my arrival at Besancon I was hungry, and I
entered a cafe. My spirit was full of revulsion for so profane
a place, but I thought that my breakfast would cost me less
than at an inn. A lady, who seemed to be the mistress of the

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK 191

establishment, took pity on my inexperience. ' Besan^on is
full of bad characters,' she said to me. ' I fear something
will happen to you, sir. If some mishap should occur to you,
have recourse to me and send to my house before eight o'clock.
If the porters of the seminary refuse to execute your errand,
say you are my cousin and a native of Genlis.' "

" I will have all this chatter verified," exclaimed the abbe
Pirard, unable to stand still, and walking about the room.

" Back to the cell."

The abbe followed Julien and locked him in. The latter
immediately began to examine his trunk, at the bottom of
which the fatal cards had been so carefully hidden. Nothing
was missing in the trunk, but several things had been dis-
arranged. Nevertheless, he had never been without the key.
What luck that, during the whole time of my blindness, said
Julien to himself, I never availed myself of the permission to
go out that Monsieur Castanede would offer me so frequently,
with a kindness which I now understand. Perhaps I should
have had the weakness to have changed my clothes and gone
to see the fair Amanda, and then I should have been ruined.
When they gave up hope of exploiting that piece of informa-
tion for the accomplishment of his ruin, they had used it to
inform against him. Two hours afterwards the director
summoned him.

" You did not lie," he said to him, with a less severe look,
" but keeping an address like that is an indiscretion of a
gravity which you are unable to realise. Unhappy child ! It
may perhaps do you harm in ten years' time."

CHAPTER XXVII

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE

The present time, Great God ! is the ark of the Lord ; cursed
be he who touches it. Diderot.

The reader will kindly excuse us if we give very few clear and
definite facts concerning this period of Julien's life. It is not
that we lack facts ; quite the contrary. But it may be that
what he saw in the seminary is too black for the medium
colour which the author has endeavoured to preserve through-
out these pages. Those of our contemporaries who have
suffered from certain things cannot remember them without a
horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that of
reading a tale.

Julien achieved scant success in his essays at hypocritical
gestures. He experienced moments of disgust, and even of
complete discouragement. He was not a success, even in a
a vile career. The slightest help from outside would have
sufficed to have given him heart again, for the difficulty to
overcome was not very great, but he was alone, like a derelict
ship in the middle of the ocean. " And when I do succeed,"
he would say to himself, " think of having to pass a whole
lifetime in such awful company, gluttons who have no thought
but for the large omelette which they will guzzle at dinner-
time, or persons like the abbe Castanede, who finds no crime
too black ! They will attain power, but, great heavens ! at
what cost.

"The will of man is powerful, I read it everywhere, but
is it enough to overcome so great a disgust ? The task of all
the great men was easy by comparison. However terrible was
the danger, they found it fine, and who can realise, except
myself, the ugliness of my surroundings ? "

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE 193

This moment was the most trying in his whole life. It
would have been so easy for him to have enlisted in one of
the fine regiments at the garrison of Besancon. He could
have become a Latin master. He needed so little for his
subsistence, but in that case no more career, no more future
for his imagination. It was equivalent to death. Here is one
of his sad days in detail :

" I have so often presumed to congratulate myself on being
different from the other young peasants ! Well, I have lived
enough to realise that difference engenders hate" he said to
himself one morning. This great truth had just been borne
in upon him by one of his most irritating failures. He had
been working for eight days at teaching a pupil who lived in
an odour of sanctity. He used to go out with him into the
courtyard and listen submissively to pieces of fatuity enough
to send one to sleep standing. Suddenly the weather turned
stormy. The thunder growled, and the holy pupil exclaimed
as he roughly pushed him away.

" Listen ! Everyone for himself in this world. I don't
want to be burned by the thunder. God may strike you with
lightning like a blasphemer, like a Voltaire."

" I deserve to be drowned if I go to sleep during the
storm," exclaimed Julien, with his teeth clenched with rage,
and with his eyes opened towards the sky now furrowed by
the lightning. " Let us try the conquest of some other
rogue."

The bell rang for the abbe Castanede's course of sacred
history. That day the abbe Castanede was teaching those
young peasants already so frightened by their father's hard-
ships and poverty, that the Government, that entity so terrible
in their eyes, possessed no real and legitimate power except
by virtue of the delegation of God's vicar on earth.

" Render yourselves worthy, by the holiness of your life
and by your obedience, of the benevolence of the Pope. Be
like a stick in his hands" he added, " and you will obtain a
superb position, where you will be far from all control, and
enjoy the King's commands, a position from which you
cannot be removed, and where one-third of the salary is
paid by the Government, while the faithful who are moulded
by your preaching pay the other two-thirds."

Castanede stopped in the courtyard after he left the lesson-

13

i 9 4 THE RED AND THE BLACK

room. " It is particularly appropriate to say of a cure," he
said to the pupils who formed a ring round him, " that the
place is worth as much as the man is worth. I myself have
known parishes in the mountains where the surplice fees were
worth more than that of many town livings. There was quite
as much money, without counting the fat capons, the eggs,
fresh butter, and a thousand and one pleasant details, and
there the cure is indisputably the first man. There is not a
good meal to which he is not invited, feted, etc."

Castanede had scarcely gone back to his room before the
pupils split up into knots. Julien did not form part of any of
them ; he was left out like a black sheep. He saw in every
knot a pupil tossing a coin in the air, and if he managed to
guess right in this game of heads or tails, his comrades would
decide that he would soon have one of those fat livings.

Anecdotes ensued. A certain young priest, who had
scarcely been ordained a year, had given a tame rabbit to the
maidservant of an old cure, and had succeeded in being asked
to be his curate. In a few months afterwards, for the cure
had quickly died, he had replaced him in that excellent living.
Another had succeeded in getting himself designated as a
successor to a very rich town living, by being present at all
the meals of an old, paralytic cure, and by dexterously carving
his poultry. The seminarists, like all young people, exag-
gerated the effect of those little devices, which have an
element of originality, and which strike the imagination.

" I must take part in these conversations," said Julien to
himself. When they did not talk about sausages and good
livings, the conversation ran on the worldly aspect of ecclesi-
astical doctrine, on the differences of bishops and prefects, of
mayors and cures. Julien caught sight of the conception of
a second god, but of a god who was much more formid-
able and much more powerful than the other one. That
second god was the Pope. They said among themselves, in
a low voice, however, and when they were quite sure that they
would not be heard by Pirard, that the reason for the Pope
not taking the trouble of nominating all the prefects and
mayors of France, was that he had entrusted that duty to the
King of France by entitling him a senior son of the Church.

It was about this time that Julien thought he could exploit,
for the benefit of his own reputation, his knowledge of De

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE 195

Maistre's book on the Pope. In point of fact, he did astonish
his comrades, but it was only another misfortune. He dis-
pleased them by expounding their own opinions better than
they could themselves. Chelan had acted as imprudently for
Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of
reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words,
but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in
the person of no importance, since every piece of logical
reasoning is offensive.

Julien's command of language added consequently a new
crime to his score. By dint of thinking about him, his
colleagues succeeded in expressing the horror with which he
would inspire them by a single expression ; they nicknamed
him Martin Luther, "particularly," they said, "because of
that infernal logic which makes him so proud."

Several young seminarists had a fresher complexion than
Julien, and could pass as better-looking, but he had white
hands, and was unable to conceal certain refined habits of
personal cleanliness. This advantage proved a disadvantage
in the gloomy house in which chance had cast him. This
dirty peasants among whom he lived asserted that he had very
abandoned morals. We fear that we may weary our reader
by a narration of the thousand and one misfortunes of our
hero. The most vigorous of his comrades, for example,
wanted to start the custom of beating him. He was obliged
to arm himself with an iron compass, and to indicate, though
by signs, that he would make use of it. Signs cannot figure
in a spy's report to such good advantage as words.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A PROCESSION

All hearts were moved. The presence of God seemed
to have descended into these narrow Gothic streets that
stretched in every direction, and were sanded by the care
of the faithful. Young.

It was in vain that Julien pretended to be petty and stupid.
He could not please ; he was too different. Yet all these pro-
fessors, he said to himself, are very clever people, men in a
thousand. Why do they not like my humility ? Only one
seemed to take advantage of his readiness to believe every-
thing, and apparently to swallow everything. This was the
abbe Chas -Bernard, the director of the ceremonies of the
cathedral, where, for the last fifteen years, he had been given
occasion to hope for a canonry. While waiting, he taught
homiletics at the seminary. During the period of Julien's
blindness, this class was one of those in which he most fre-
quently came out top. The abbe Chas had used this as an
opportunity to manifest some friendship to him, and when the
class broke up, he would be glad to take him by the arm for
some turns in the garden.

" What is he getting at," Julien would say to himself. He
noticed with astonishment that, for hours on end, the abbe
would talk to him about the ornaments possessed by the
cathedral. It had seventeen lace chasubles, besides the
mourning vestments. A lot was hoped from the old wife of
the judge de Rubempre. This lady, who was ninety years of
age, had kept for at least seventy years her wedding dress of
superb Lyons material, embroidered with gold.

" Imagine, my friend," the abbe Chas would say, stopping
abruptly, and staring with amazement, "that this material

A PROCESSION 197

keeps quite stiff. There is so much gold in it. It is generally
thought in Besancon that the will of the judge's wife will result
in the cathedral treasure being increased by more than ten
chasubles, without counting four or five capes for the great
feast. I will go further," said the abbe Chas, lowering his
voice, " I have reasons for thinking the judge's wife will leave
us her magnificent silver gilt candlesticks, supposed to have
been bought in Italy by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy,
whose favourite minister was one of the good lady's ancestors."

" But what is the fellow getting at with all this old clothes
business," thought Julien. " These adroit preliminaries have
been going on for centuries, and nothing comes of them. He
must be very suspicious of me. He is cleverer than all the
others, whose secret aim can be guessed so easily in a fort-
night. I understand. He must have been suffering for
fifteen years from mortified ambition."

Julien was summoned one evening in the middle of the
fencing lesson to the abbe Pirard, who said to him.

" To-morrow is the feast of Corpus Domini (the Fete Dieu)
the abbe Chas-Bernard needs you to help him to decorate the
cathedral. Go and obey." The abbe Pirard called him
back and added sympathetically. " It depends on you
whether you will utilise the occasion to go into the town."

" Incedo per ignes," answered Julien. (I have secret
enemies).

Julien went to the cathedral next morning with downcast
eyes. The sight of the streets and the activity which was
beginning to prevail in the town did him good. In all quarters
they were extending the fronts of the houses for the procession.

All the time that he had passed in the seminary seemed to
him no more than a moment. His thoughts were of Vergy,
and of the pretty Amanda whom he might perhaps meet, for
her cafe was not very far off. He saw in the distance the
abbe Chas-Bernard on the threshold of his beloved cathedral.
He was a big man with a jovial face and a frank air. To-day
he looked triumphant. " I was expecting you, my dear son,"
he cried as soon as he saw Julien in the distance. " Be
welcome. This day's duty will be protracted and arduous.
Let us fortify ourselves by a first breakfast. We will have the
second at ten o'clock during high mass."

" I do not wish, sir," said Julien to him gravely, " to be

198 THE RED AND THE BLACK

alone for a single instant. Deign to observe," he added,
showing him the clock over their heads, " that I have arrived
at one minute to five."

"So those little rascals at the seminary frightened you. It
is very good of you to think of them," said the abbe. " But is
the road less beautiful because there are thorns in the hedges
which border it. Travellers go on their way, and leave the
wicked thorns to wait in vain where they are. And now to
work my dear friend, to work"

The abbe Chas was right in saying that the task would be
arduous. There had been a great funeral ceremony at the
cathedral the previous day. They had not been able to make
any preparations. They had consequently only one morning
for dressing all the Gothic pillars which constitute the three
naves with a kind of red damask cloth ascending to a height of
thirty feet. The Bishop had fetched by mail four decorators
from Paris, but these gentry were not able to do everything,
and far from giving any encouragement to the clumsiness of
the Besancon colleagues, they made it twice as great by
making fun of them.

Julien saw that he would have to climb the ladder himself.
His agility served him in good stead. He undertook the
direction of the decorators from town. The Abbe Chas was
delighted as he watched him flit from ladder to ladder. When
all the pillars were dressed in damask, five enormous bouquets
of feathers had to be placed on the great baldachin above the
grand altar. A rich coping of gilded wood was supported by
eight big straight columns of Italian marble, but to reach the
centre of the baldachin above the tabernacle involved walking
over an old wooden cornice which was forty feet high and
possibly worm-eaten.

The sight of this difficult crossing had extinguished the
gaiety of the Parisian decorators, which up till then had been
so brilliant. They looked at it from down below, argued
a great deal, but did not go up. Julien seized hold of the
bouquets of feathers and climbed the ladder at a run. He
placed it neatly on the crown-shaped ornament in the centre
of the baldachin. When he came down the ladder again, the
abbe Chas-Bernard embraced him in his arms.

" Optime" exclaimed the good priest, " I will tell this to
Monseigneur.'

A PROCESSION 19,

Breakfast at ten o'clock was very gay. The abbe Chas had
never seen his church look so beautiful.

" Dear disciple," he said to Julien. " My mother used to
let out chairs in this venerable building, so I have been
brought up in this great edifice. The Terror of Robespierre
ruined us, but when I was eight years old, that was my
age then, I used to serve masses in private houses, so you
see I got my meals on mass-days. Nobody could fold a
chasuble better than I could, and I never cut the fringes.
After the re-establishment of public worship by Napoleon,
I had the good fortune to direct everything in this venerable
metropolis. Five times a year do my eyes see it adorned with
these fine ornaments. But it has never been so resplendent,
and the damask breadths have never been so well tied or so
close to the pillars as they are to-day."

" So he is going to tell me his secret at last," said Julien.
M Now he is going to talk about himself. He is expanding."
But nothing imprudent was said by the man in spite of his
evident exaltation.

" All the same he has worked a great deal," said Julien to
himself. " He is happy. What a man ! What an example
for me ! He really takes the cake." (This was a vulgar phrase
which he had learned from the old surgeon).

As the sanctus of high mass sounded, Julien wanted to take
a surplice to follow the bishop in the superb procession-
" And the thieves, my friend ! And the thieves," exclaimed
the abbe Chas. " Have you forgotten them ? The procession
will go out, but we will watch, will you and I. We shall be
very lucky if we get off with the loss of a couple of ells of this
fine lace which surrounds the base of the pillars. It is a gift
of Madame de Rubempre. It comes from her great-grand-
father the famous Count. It is made of real gold, my friend,"
added the abbe in a whisper, and with evident exaltation.
" And all genuine. I entrust you with the watching of the
north wing. Do not leave it. I will keep the south wing and
the great nave for myself. Keep an eye on the confessional.
It is there that the women accomplices of the thieves always
spy. Look out for the moment when we turn our backs."

As he finished speaking, a quarter to twelve struck. Im-
mediately afterwards the sound of the great clock was heard.
It rang a full peal. These full solemn ounds affected Julien.

zoo THE RED AND THE BLACK

His imagination was no longer turned to things earthly. The
perfume of the incense and of the rose leaves thrown before
the holy sacrament by little children disguised as St. John
increased his exaltation.

Logically the grave sounds of the bell should only have
recalled to Julien's mind the thought of the labour of twenty
men paid fifty-four centimes each, and possibly helped by
fifteen or twenty faithful souls. Logically, he ought to have
thought of the wear and tear of the cords and of the framework
and of the danger of the clock itself, which falls down every
two centuries, and to have considered the means of diminishing
the salary of the bell-ringers, or of paying them by some
indulgence or other grace dispensed from the treasures of the
Church without diminishing its purse.

Julien's soul exalted by these sounds with all their virile
fulness, instead of making these wise reflections, wandered in
the realm of imagination. He will never turn out a good
priest or a good administrator. Souls which get thrilled so
easily are at the best only capable of producing an artist. At
this moment the presumption of Julien bursts out into full
view. Perhaps fifty of his comrades in the seminary made
attentive to the realities of life by their own unpopularity and
the Jacobinism which they are taught to see hiding behind
every hedge, would have had no other thought suggested by
the great bell of the cathedral except the wages of the ringers.
They would have analysed with the genius of Bareme whether
the intensity of the emotion produced among the public was
worth the money which was given to the ringers. If Julien
had only tried to think of the material interests of the cathedral,
his imagination would have transcended its actual object and
thought of economizing forty francs on the fabric and have
lost the opportunity of avoiding an expense of twenty-five
centimes.

While the procession slowly traversed Besanr^on on the
finest day imaginable, and stopped at the brilliant altar-stations
put up by the authorities, the church remained in profound
silence. There prevailed a semi-obscurity, an agreeable fresh-
ness. It was still perfumed with the fragrance of flowers and
incense.

The silence, the deep solitude, the freshness of the long
naves sweetened Julien's reverie. He did not fear being

A PROCESSION 201

troubled by the abbe Chas, who was engaged in another part
of the building. His soul had almost abandoned its mortal
tenement, which was pacing slowly the north wing which had
been trusted to his surveillance. He was all the more tranquil
when he had assured himself that there was no one in the
confessional except some devout women. His eyes looked in
front of him seeing nothing.

His reverie was almost broken by the sight of two well-
dressed women, one in the Confessional, and the other on
a chair quite near her. He looked without seeing, but
noticed, however, either by reason of some vague apprecia-
tion of his duties or admiration for the aristocratic but
simple dress of the ladies, that there was no priest in the
Confessional.

" It is singular," he thought, " that if these fair ladies are
devout, they are not kneeling before some altar, or that if they
are in society they have not an advantageous position in the
first row of some balcony. How well cut that dress is ! How
graceful ! "

He slackened his pace to try and look at them. The lady
who was kneeling in the Confessional turned her head a little
hearing the noise of Julien's step in this solemn place.
Suddenly she gave a loud cry, and felt ill.

As the lady collapsed and fell backwards on her knees,
her friend who was near her hastened to help her. At the
same time Julien saw the shoulders of the lady who was falling
backwards. His eyes were struck by a twisted necklace of
fine, big pearls, which he knew well. What were his emotions
when he recognised the hair of Madame de Renal ? It was
she ! The lady who was trying to prevent her from falling was
Madame Derville. Julien was beside himself and hastened to
their side. Madame de Renal's fall would perhaps have carried
her friend along with her, if Julien had not supported them.
He saw the head of Madame de Renal, pale and entirely
devoid of consciousness floating on his shoulder. He helped
Madame Derville to lean that charming head up against a
straw chair. He knelt down.

Madame Derville turned round and recognised him.

" Away, monsieur, away ! " she said to him, in a tone of the
most lively anger. "Above all, do not let her see you again. The
sight of you would be sure to horrify her. She was so happy

tea THE RED AND THE BLACK

before you came. Your conduct is atrocious. Flee ! Take
yourself off if you have any shame left."

These words were spoken with so much authority, and
Julien felt so weak, that he did take himself off. " She always
hated me," he said to himself, thinking of Madame Derville.
At the same moment the nasal chanting of the first priests in
the procession which was now coming back resounded in the
church. The abbe Chas-Bernard called Julien, who at first
did not hear him, several times. He came at last and took
his arm behind a pillar where Julien had taken refuge more
dead than alive. He wanted to present him to the Bishop.

" Are you feeling well, my child ? " said the abbe to him,
seeing him so pale, and almost incapable of walking. " You
have worked too much." The abbe gave him his arm.
" Come, sit down behind me here, on the little seat of the
dispenser of holy water ; I will hide you."

They were now beside the main door.

" Calm yourself. We have still a good twenty minutes
before Monseigneur appears. Try and pull yourself together.
I will lift you up when he passes, for in spite of my age, I am
strong and vigorous."

Julien was trembling so violently when the Bishop passed,
that the abbe Chas gave up the idea of presenting him.

" Do not take it too much to heart," he said. " I will find
another opportunity."

The same evening he had six pounds of candles which had
been saved, he said, by Julien's carefulness, and by the
promptness with which he had extinguished them, carried to
the seminary chapel. Nothing could have been nearer the
truth. The poor boy was extinguished himself. He had not
had a single thought after meeting Madame de Renal.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FIRST PROMOTION

He knew his age, he knew his department, and he is rich.

The Forerunner.

Julien had not emerged from the deep reverie in which the
episode in the cathedral had plunged him, when the severe
abbe Pirard summoned him.

" M. the abbe Chas-Bernard has just written in your
favour. I am on the whole sufficiently satisfied with your
conduct. You are extremely imprudent and irresponsible
without outward signs of it. However, up to the present, you
have proved yourself possessed of a good and even generous
heart. Your intellect is superior. Taking it all round, I see
in you a spark which one must not neglect.

" I am on the point of leaving this house after fifteen years
of work. My crime is that I have left the seminarists to their
free will, and that I have neither protected nor served that
secret society of which you spoke to me at the Confessional.
I wish to do something for you before I leave. I would have
done so two months earlier, for you deserve it, had it not been
for the information laid against you as the result of the finding
in your trunk of Amanda Binet's address. I will make you
New and Old Testament tutor. Julien was transported with
gratitude and evolved the idea of throwing himself on his knees
and thanking God. He yielded to a truer impulse, and
approaching the abbe Pirard, took his hand and pressed it to
his lips.

"What is the meaning of this?" exclaimed the director
angrily, but Julien's eyes said even more than his act.

The abbe Pirard looked at him in astonishment, after the
manner of a man who has long lost the habit of encountering

204 THE RED AND THE BLACK

refined emotions. The attention deceived the director. His
voice altered.

" Well yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows
that I have been so in spite of myself. I ought to show
neither hate nor love to anyone. I see in you something which
offends the vulgar. Jealousy and calumny will pursue you in
whatever place Providence may place you. Your comrades
will never behold you without hate, and if they pretend to
like you, it will only be to betray you with greater certainty.
For this there is only one remedy. Seek help only from God,
who, to punish you for your presumption, has cursed you with
the inevitable hatred of your comrades. Let your conduct be
pure. That is the only resource which I can see for you. If
you love truth with an irresistible embrace, your enemies will
sooner or later be confounded."

It had been so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice
that he must be forgiven a weakness. He burst out into
tears.

The abbe Pirard held out his arms to him. This moment
was very sweet to both of them. Julien was mad with joy.
This promotion was the first which he had obtained. The
advantages were immense. To realise them one must have
been condemned to pass months on end without an instant's
solitude, and in immediate contact with comrades who were at
the best importunate, and for the most part insupportable.
Their cries alone would have sufficed to disorganise a delicate
constitution. The noise and joy of these peasants, well-fed
and well-clothed as they were, could only find a vent for itself,
or believe in its own completeness when they were shouting
with all the strength of their lungs.

Now Julien dined alone, or nearly an hour later than the
other seminarists. He had a key of the garden and could walk
in it when no one else was there.

Julien was astonished to perceive that he was now hated
less. He, on the contrary, had been expecting that their
hate would become twice as intense. That secret desire of
his that he should not be spoken to, which had been only too
manifest before, and had earned him so many enemies, was
no longer looked upon as a sign of ridiculous haughtiness.
It became, in the eyes of the coarse beings who surrounded
him, a just appreciation of his own dignity. The hatred of

THE FIRST PROMOTION 205

him sensibly diminished, above all among the youngest of his
comrades, who were now his pupils, and whom he treated
with much politeness. Gradually he obtained his own
following. It became looked upon as bad form to call him
Martin Luther.

But what is the good of enumerating his friends and his
enemies? The whole business is squalid, and all the more
squalid in proportion to the truth of the picture. And yet
the clergy supply the only teachers of morals which the people
have. What would happen to the people without them ?
Will the paper ever replace the cure ?

Since Julien's new dignity, the director of the seminary
made a point of never speaking to him without witnesses.
These tactics were prudent, both for the master and for the
pupil, but above all it was meant for a test. The invariable
principle of that severe Jansenist Pirard was this "if a man
has merit in your eyes, put obstacles in the way of all he
desires, and of everything which he undertakes. If the merit
is real, he will manage to overthrow or get round those
obstacles."

It was the hunting season. It had occurred to Fouque to
send a stag and a boar to the seminary as though they came
from Julien's parents. The dead animals were put down on
the floor between the kitchen and the refectory. It was there
that they were seen by all the seminarists on their way to
dinner. They constituted a great attraction for their curiosity.
The boar, dead though it was, made the youngest ones feel
frightened. They touched its tusks. They talked of nothing
else for a whole week.

This gift, which raised Julien's family to the level of that
class of society which deserves respect, struck a deadly blow
at all jealousy. He enjoyed a superiority, consecrated by
fortune. Chazel, the most distinguished of the seminarists,
made advances to him, and always reproached him for not
having previously apprised them of his parents' position and
had thus involved them in treating money without sufficient
respect. A conscription took place, from which Julien, in
his capacity as seminarist, was exempt. This circumstance
affected him profoundly. "So there is just passed for ever
that moment which, twenty years earlier, would have seen my
heroic life begin. He was walking alone in the seminary

206 THE RED AND THE BLACK

garden. He heard the masons who were walling up the
cloister walls talking between themselves.

" Yes, we must go. There's the new conscription. When
the other was alive it was good business. A mason could
become an officer then, could become a general then. One
has seen such things."

" You go and see now. It's only the ragamuffins who
leave for the army. Any one who has anything stays in the
country here."

" The man who is born wretched stays wretched, and there
you are."

" I say, is it true what they say, that the other is dead ? "
put in the third mason.

" Oh well, it's the ' big men ' who say that, you see. The
other one made them afraid."

" What a difference. How the fortification went ahead in his
time. And to think of his being betrayed by his own marshals."

This conversation consoled Julien a little. As he went
away, he repeated with a sigh :

" Le seul roi dont le peuple a garde la memore."

The time for the examination arrived. Julien answered
brilliantly. He saw that Chazel endeavoured to exhibit all
his knowledge. On the first day the examiners, nominated by
the famous Grand Vicar de Frilair, were very irritated at
always having to put first, or at any rate second, on their list,
that Julien Sorel, who had been designated to them as the
Benjamin of the Abbe Pirard. There were bets in the
seminary that Julien would come out first in the final list of
the examination, a privilege which carried with it the honour
of dining with my Lord Bishop. But at the end of a sitting,
dealing with the fathers of the Church, an adroit examiner,
having first interrogated Julien on Saint Jerome and his
passion for Cicero, went on to speak about Horace, Virgil and
other profane authors. Julien had learnt by heart a great
number of passages from these authors without his comrades,
knowledge. Swept away by his successes, he forgot the place
where he was, and recited in paraphrase with spirit several
odes of Horace at the repeated request of the examiner.
Having for twenty minutes given him enough rope to hang
himself, the examiner changed his expression, and bitterly
reproached him for the time he had wasted on these profane

THE FIRST PROMOTION 207

studies, and the useless or criminal ideas which he had got
into his head.

" 1 am a fool, sir You are right," said Julien modestly,
realising the adroit stratagem of which he was the victim.

This examiner's dodge was considered dirty, even at the
seminary, but this did not prevent the abbe de Frilair, that
adroit individual who had so cleverly organised the machinery
of the Besancon congregation, and whose despatches to Paris
put fear into the hearts of judges, prefect, and even the
generals of the garrison, from placing with his powerful hand
the number 198 against Julien's name. He enjoyed subject-
ing his enemy, Pirard the Jansenist, to this mortification.

His chief object for the last ten years had been to deprive
him of the headship of the seminary. The abbe, who had
himself followed the plan which he had indicated to Julien,
was sincere, pious, devoted to his duties and devoid of
intrigue, but heaven in its anger had given him that bilious
temperament which is by nature so deeply sensitive to insults
and to hate. None of the insults which were addressed to
him was wasted on his burning soul. He would have
handed in his resignation a hundred times over, but he
believed that he was useful in the place where Providence had
set him. " I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and Idolatry,"
he said to himself.

At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps nearly
two months since he had spoken to Julien, and nevertheless,
he was ill for eight days when, on receipt of the official letter
announcing the result of the competition, he saw the number
198 placed beside the name of that pupil whom he regarded
as the glory of his town. This stern character found his only
consolation in concentrating all his surveillance on Julien.
He was delighted that he discovered in him neither anger,
nor vindictiveness, nor discouragement.

Julien felt a thrill some months afterwards when he received
a letter. It bore the Paris post-mark. Madame de Renal is
remembering her promises at last, he thought. A gentleman
who signed himself Paul Sorel, and who said that he was his
relative, sent him a letter of credit for five hundred francs.
The writer went on to add that if Julien went on to study
successfully the good Latin authors, a similar sum would be
sent to him every year.

208 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" It is she. It is her kindness," said Julien to himself,
feeling quite overcome. "She wishes to console me. But
why not a single word of affection ? "

He was making a mistake in regard to this letter, for
Madame de Renal, under the influence of her friend, Madame
Derville, was abandoning herself absolutely to profound
remorse. She would often think, in spite of herself, of that
singular being, the meeting with whom had revolutionized her
life. But she carefully refrained from writing to him.

If we were to talk the terminology of the seminary, we
would be able to recognise a miracle in the sending of these
five hundred francs and to say that heaven was making use of
Monsieur de Frilair himself in order to give this gift to Julien.
Twelve years previously the abbe de Frilair had arrived in
Besanc_on with an extremely exiguous portmanteau, which,
according to the story, contained all his fortune. He was
now one of the richest proprietors of the department. In the
course of his prosperity, he had bought the one half of an
estate, while the other half had been inherited by Monsieur
de la Mole. Consequently there was a great lawsuit between
these two personages.

M. le Marquis de la Mole felt that, in spite of his brilliant
life at Paris and the offices which he held at Court, it would
be dangerous to fight at Besancon against the Grand Vicar, who
was reputed to make and unmake prefects.

Instead of soliciting a present of fifty thousand francs which
could have been smuggled into the budget under some name
or other, and of throwing up this miserable lawsuit with the
abbe Frilair over a matter of fifty thousand francs, the marquis
1 >st his temper. He thought he was in the right, absolutely
in the right. Moreover, if one is permitted to say so, who is
the judge who has not got a son, or at any rate a cousin
to push in the world ?

In order to enlighten the blindest minds the abbe de Frilair
took the carriage of my Lord the Bishop eight days after the
first decree which he obtained, and went himself to convey the
cross of the Legion of Honour to his advocate. M. de la
Mole, a little dumbfoundered at the demeanour of the other
side, and appreciating also that his own advocates were
slackening their efforts, asked advice of the abbe Chelan, who
put hiin in communication with M. Pirard.

THE FIRST PROMOTION 209

At the period of our story the relations between these two
men had lasted for several years. The abbe Pirard imported
into this affair his characteristic passion. Being in constant
touch with the Marquis's advocates, he studied his case, and
finding it just, he became quite openly the solicitor of M. de la
Mole against the all-powerful Grand Vicar. The latter felt
outraged by such insolence, and on the part of a little Jansenist
into the bargain.

"See what this Court nobility who pretend to be so
powerful really are," would say the abbe de Frilair to his
intimates. M. de la Mole has not even sent a miserable cross
to his agent at Besancon, and will let him be tamely turned
out. None the less, so they write me, this noble peer never lets
a week go by without going to show off his blue ribbon in
the drawing-room of the Keeper of Seal, whoever it may be.

In spite of all the energy of the abbe Pirard, and although
M. de la Mle was always on the best of terms with the
minister of justice, and above all with his officials, the best
that he could achieve after six careful years was not to lose
his lawsuit right out. Being as he was in ceaseless correspond-
ence with the abbe Pirard in connection with an affair in
which they were both passionately interested, the Marquis
came to appreciate the abbe's particular kind of intellect.
Little by little, and in spite of the immense distance in their
social positions, their correspondence assumed the tone of
friendship. The abbe Pirard told the Marquis that they
wanted to heap insults upon him till he should be forced to
hand in his resignation. In his anger against what, in his
opinion, was the infamous stratagem employed against Julien,
he narrated his history to the Marquis.

Although extremely rich, this great lord was by no means
miserly. He had never been able to prevail on the abbe
Pirard to accept even the reimbursement of the postal expenses
occasioned by the lawsuit. He seized the opportunity of
sending five hundred francs to his favourite pupil. M. de la
Mole himself took the trouble of writing the covering letter.
This gave the abbe food for thought. One day the latter
received a little note which requested him to go immediately
on an urgent matter to an inn on the outskirts of Besancon.
He found there the steward of M. de la Mle.

" M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage,"

14

210 THE RED AND THE BLACK

said the man to him. " He hopes that after you have read
this letter you will find it convenient to leave for Paris in four
or five days. I will employ the time in the meanwhile in
asking you to be good enough to show me the estates of M.
le Marquis in the Franche-Comte, so that I can go over them."
The letter was short :

" Rid yourself, my good sir, of all the chicanery of the provinces
and come and breathe the peaceful atmosphere of Paris. I send
you my carriage which has orders to await your decision for four
days. I will await you myself at Paris until Tuesday. You only
require to say so, monsieur, to accept in your own name one of the
best livings in the environs of Paris. The richest of your future
parishioners has never seen you, but is more devoted than you can
possibly think : he is the Marquis de la Mole."

Without having suspected it, the stern abbe Pirard loved
this seminary, peopled as it was by his enemies, but to which
for the past fifteen years he had devoted all his thoughts. M.
de la Mole's letter had the effect on him of the visit of the
surgeon come to perform a difficult but necessary operation.
His dismissal was certain. He made an appointment with
the steward for three days later. For forty-eight hours he was
in a fever of uncertainty. Finally he wrote to the M. de la
Mole, and composed for my Lord the Bishop a letter, a
masterpiece of ecclesiastical style, although it was a little long ;
it would have been difficult to have found more unimpeachable
phrases, and ones breathing a more sincere respect. And
nevertheless, this letter, intended as it was to get M. de Frilair
into trouble with his patron, gave utterance to all the serious
matters of complaint, and even descended to the little squalid
intrigues which, having been endured with resignation for six
years, were forcing the abbe Pirard to leave the diocese.

They stole his firewood, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.

Having finished this letter he had Julien called. Like all
the other seminarists, he was sleeping at eight o'clock in the
evening.

" You know where the Bishop's Palace is," he said to him
in good classical Latin. " Take this letter to my Lord. I
will not hide from you that I am sending you into the midst
of the wolves. Be all ears and eyes. Let there be no lies in
your answers, but realise that the man questioning you will

THE FIRST PROMOTION 211

possibly experience a real joy in being able to hurt you. I am
very pleased, my child, at being able to give you this experience
before I leave you, for I do not hide from you that the letter
which you are bearing is my resignation."

Julien stood motionless. He loved the abbe Pirard. It
was in vain that prudence said to him,

"After this honest man's departure the Sacre Coeur party
will disgrace me and perhaps expel me."

He could not think of himself. He was embarrassed by a
phrase which he was trying to turn in a polite way, but as a
matter of fact he found himself without the brains to do so.

" Well, my friend, are you not going ? "

" Is it because they say, monsieur," answered Julian
timidly, " that you have put nothing on one side during your
long administration. I have six hundred francs."

His tears prevented him from continuing.

" That also will be noticed" said the ex-director of the
seminary coldly. " Go to the Palace. It is getting late."

Chance would so have it that on that evening, the abbe de
Frilair was on duty in the salon of the Palace. My lord was
dining with the prefect, so it was to M. de Frilair himself that
Julien, though he did not know it, handed the letter.

Julien was astonished to see this abbe boldly open the letter
which was addressed to the Bishop. The face of the Grand
Vicar soon expressed surprise, tinged with a lively pleasure,
and became twice as grave as before. Julien, struck with his
good appearance, found time to scrutinise him while he was
reading. This face would have possessed more dignity had it
not been for the extreme sublety which appeared in some
features, and would have gone to the fact of actually denoting
falseness if the possessor of this fine countenance had ceased
to school it for a single minute. The very prominent nose
formed a perfectly straight line and unfortunately gave to an
otherwise distinguished profile, a curious resemblance to the
physiognomy of a fox. Otherwise this abbe, who appeared so
engrossed with Monsieur Pirard's resignation, was dressed with
an elegance which Julien had never seen before in any priest
and which pleased him exceedingly.

It was only later that Julien knew in what the special talent
of the abbe de Frilair really consisted. He knew how to
amuse his bishop, an amiable old man made for Paris life, and

2i2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

who looked upon Besancon as exile. This Bishop had very
bad sight, and was passionately fond of fish. The abbe de
Frilair used to take the bones out of the fish which was served
to my Lord. Julien looked silently at the abbe who was re-
reading the resignation when the door suddenly opened with
a noise. A richly dressed lackey passed in rapidly. Julien
had only time to turn round towards the door. He perceived
a little old man wearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated him-
self. The Bishop addressed a benevolent smile to him and
passed on. The handsome abbe followed him and Julien was
left alone in the salon, and was able to admire at his leisure
its pious magnificence.

The Bishop of Besancon, a man whose spirit had been tried
but not broken by the long miseries of the emigration, was
more than seventy-five years old and concerned himself in-
finitely little with what might happen in ten years' time.

"Who is that clever-looking seminarist I think I saw as I
passed ? " said the Bishop. " Oughtn't they to be in bed
according to my regulations."

"That one is very wide-awake I assure you, my Lord, and
he brings great news. It is the resignation of the only
Jansenist residing in your diocese, that terrible abbe Pirard
realises at last that we mean business."

11 Well," said the Bishop with a laugh. " I challenge you
to replace him with any man of equal worth, and to show you
how much I prize that man, I will invite him to dinner for
to-morrow."

The Grand Vicar tried to slide in a few words concerning
the choice of a successor. The prelate, who was little disposed
to talk business, said to him.

" Before we install the other, let us get to know a little of
the circumstances under which the present one is going.
Fetch me this seminarist. The truth is in the mouth of
children."

Julien was summoned. " I shall find myself between two
inquisitors," he thought. He had never felt more courageous.
At the moment when he entered, two valets, better dressed
than M. Valenod himself, were undressing my lord. That
prelate thought he ought to question Julien on his studies
before questioning him about M. Pirard. He talked a
little theology, and was astonished. He soon came to the

THE FIRST PROMOTION 213

humanities, to Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. " It was those
names," thought Julien, that earned me my number 198. I
have nothing to lose. Let us try and shine. He succeeded.
The prelate, who was an excellent humanist himself, was
delighted.

At the prefect's dinner, a young girl who was justly
celebrated, had recited the poem of the Madeleine. He was
in the mood to talk literature, and very quickly forgot the
abbe Pirard and his affairs to discuss with the seminarist
whether Horace was rich or poor. The prelate quoted several
odes, but sometimes his memory was sluggish, and then
Julien would recite with modesty the whole ode : the fact
which struck the bishop was that Julien never deviated from
the conversational tone. He spoke his twenty or thirty Latin
verses as though he had been speaking of what was taking
place in his own seminary. They talked for a long time of
Virgil, or Cicero, and the prelate could not help compliment-
ing the young seminarist. You could not have studied better."

" My Lord," said Julien, " your seminary can offer you
197 much less unworthy of your high esteem."

"How is that?" said the Prelate astonished by the
number."

" I can support by official proof just what I have had the
honour of saying before my lord. I obtained the number 198
at the seminary's annual examination by giving accurate
answers to the very questions which are earning me at the
present moment my lord's approbation.

"Ah, it is the Benjamin of the abbe Pirard," said the
Bishop with a laugh, as he looked at M. de Frilair. " We
should have been prepared for this. But it is fair fighting.
Did you not have to be woken up, my friend," he said,
addressing himself to Julien. " To be sent here ? "

" Yes, my Lord. I have only been out of the seminary alone
once in my life to go and help M. the abbe Chas-Bernard
decorate the cathedral on Corpus Christi day.

" Optime," said the Bishop. " So, it is you who showed
proof of so much courage by placing the bouquets of feathers
on the baldachin. They make me shudder. They make me
fear that they will cost some man his life. You will go far, my
friend, but I do not wish to cut short your brilliant career by
making you die of hunger."

214 THE RED AND THE BLACK

And by the order of the Bishop, biscuits and wine were
brought in, to which Julien did honour, and the abbe de
Frilair, who knew that his Bishop liked to see people eat gaily
and with a good appetite, even greater honour.

The prelate, more and more satisfied with the end of his
evening, talked for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He
saw that Julien did not understand. The prelate passed on
to the moral condition of the Roman Empire under the system
of the Emperor Constantine. The end of paganism had been
accompanied by that state of anxiety and of doubt which
afflicts sad and jaded spirits in the nineteenth century. My
Lord noticed Julien's ignorance of almost the very name of
Tacitus. To the astonishment of the prelate, Julien answered
frankly that that author was not to be found in the seminary
library.

" I am truly very glad," said the Bishop gaily, "You
relieve me of an embarrassment. I have been trying for the
last five minutes to find a way of thanking you for the charm-
ing evening which you have given me in a way that I could
certainly never have expected. I did not anticipate finding a
teacher in a pupil in my seminary. Although the gift is not
unduly canonical, I want to give you a Tacitus. The prelate
had eight volumes in a superior binding fetched for him, and
insisted on writing himself on the title page of the first volume
a Latin compliment to Julien Sorel. The Bishop plumed
himself on his fine Latinity. He finished by saying to him in
a serious tone, which completely clashed with the rest of the
conversation.

" Young man, if you are good, you will have one day the
best living in my diocese, and one not a hundred leagues from
my episcopal palace, but you must be good."

Laden with his volumes, Julien left the palace in as tate of
great astonishment as midnight was striking.

My Lord had not said a word to him about the abbe
Pirard. Julien was particularly astonished by the Bishop's
extreme politeness. He had had no conception of such an
urbanity in form combined with so natural an air of dignity.
Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing again
the gloomy abbe Pirard, who was impatiently awaiting him.

" Quid tibi dixerunt (What have they said to you) ? " he
cried out to him in a loud voice as soon as he saw him in the

THE FIRST PROMOTION 315

distance. " Speak French, and repeat my Lord's own words
without either adding or subtracting anything," said the ex-
Director of the seminary in his harsh tone, and with his
particularly inelegant manners, as Julien got slightly confused
in translating into Latin the speeches of the Bishop.

" What a strange present on the part of the Bishop to a
young seminarist," he ventured to say as he turned over the
leaves of the superb Tacitus, whose gilt edges seemed to
horrify him.

Two o'clock was already striking when he allowed his
favourite pupil to retire to his room after an extremely detailed
account.

" Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus," he said to
him. " Where is my Lord Bishop's compliment? This Latin
line will serve as your lightning-conductor in this house after
my departure."

Erit tibi, fill mi, successor meus tanquam leo querens quern
devoret. (For my successor will be to you, my son, like a
ravening lion seeking someone to devour).

The following morning Julien- noticed a certain strangeness
in the manner in which his comrades spoke to him. It only
made him more reserved. " This," he thought, " is the result of
M. Pirard's resignation. It is known over the whole house,
and I pass for his favourite. There ought logically to be an
insult in their demeanour." But he could not detect it. On
the contrary, there was an absence of hate in the eyes of all
those he met along the corridors. " What is the meaning of
this? It is doubtless a trap. Let us play a wary game."

Finally the little seminarist said to him with a laugh,

" Cornelii Taciti opera omnia (complete works of Taciti)."

On hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien
enviously, not only on the magnificent present which he had
received from my lord, but also on the two hours' conversation
with which he had been honoured. They knew even its
minutest details. From that moment envy ceased completely.
They courted him basely. The abbe Castanede, who had
manifested towards him the most extreme insolence the very
day before, came and took his arm and invited him to breakfast.

By some fatality in Julien's character, while the insolence of
hese coarse creatures had occasioned him great pain, their
baseness afforded him disgust, but no pleasure.

2i6 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Towards mid-day the abbe Pirard took leave of his pupils,
but not before addressing to them a severe admonition.

" Do you wish for the honours of the world," he said to
them. " For all the social advantages, for the pleasure of
commanding pleasures, of setting the laws at defiance, and
the pleasure of being insolent with impunity to all ? Or do
you wish for your eternal salvation ? The most backward of
you have only got to open your eyes to distinguish the true
ways."

He had scarcely left before the devotees of the SacrS Coeur
de Jesus went into the chapel to intone a Te Deum. Nobody
in the seminary took the ex-director's admonition seriously.

" He shows a great deal of temper because he is losing his
job," was what was said in every quarter.

Not a single seminarist was simple enough to believe in the
voluntary resignation of a position which put him into such
close touch with the big contractors.

The abbe Pirard went and established himself in the finest
inn at Besancon, and making an excuse of business which he
had not got, insisted on passing a couple of days there. The
Bishop had invited him to dinner, and in order to chaff his
Grand Vicar de Frilair, endeavoured to make him shine.
They were at dessert when the extraordinary intelligence
arrived from Paris that the abbe Pirard had been appointed to

the magnificent living of N. four leagues from Paris.

The good prelate congratulated him upon it. He saw in the
whole affair a piece of good play which put him in a good
temper and gave him the highest opinion of the abbe's talents.
He gave him a magnificent Latin certificate, and enjoined
silence on the abbe de Frilair, who was venturing to re-
monstrate.

The same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to
the Marquise de Rubempre. This was great news for fine
Besancon society. They abandoned themselves to all kinds
of conjectures over this extraordinary favour. They already
saw the abbe Pirard a Bishop. The more subtle brains
thought M. de la Mole was a minister, and indulged on this
day in smiles at the imperious airs that M. the abbe de Frilair
adopted in society.

The following day the abbe Pirard was almost mobbed in
the streets, and the tradesmen came to their shop doors when

THE FIRST PROMOTION 217

he went to solicit an interview with the judges who had had to
try the Marquis's lawsuit. For the first time in his life he was
politely received by them. The stern Jansenist, indignant as he
was with all that he saw, worked long with the advocates whom
he had chosen for the Marquis de la Mole, and left for Paris.
He was weak enough to tell two or three college friends who
accompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they
admired, that after having administered the Seminary for
fifteen years he was leaving Besancon with five hundred and
twenty francs of savings. His friends kissed him with tears
in their eyes, and said to each other,

" The good abbe could have spared himself that lie. It is
really too ridiculous."

The vulgar, blinded as they are by the love of money, were
constitutionally incapable of understanding that it was in his
own sincerity that the abbe Pirard had found the necessary
strength to fight for six years against Marie Alacoque, the
Sacri Coeur de Jems, the Jesuits and his Bishop.

CHAPTER XXX

AN AMBITIOUS MAN

There is only one nobility, the title of duke ; a marquis is
ridiculous ; the word duke makes one turn round.

Edinburgh Review.

The Marquis de la Mole received the abbe Pirard without any
of those aristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at
the same time so impertinent to one who understands them.
It would have been waste of time, and the Marquis was
sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to have no time to lose.

He had been intriguing for six months to get both the king
and people to accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude,
was to make him a Duke. The Marquis had been asking his
Besancon advocate for years on end for a clear and precise
summary of his Franche-Comte lawsuits. How could the
celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand
himself? The little square of paper which the abbe handed
him explained the whole matter.

" My dear abbe," said the Marquis to him, having got
through in less than five minutes all polite formulae of personal
questions. " My dear abbe, in the midst of my pretended
prosperity I lack the time to occupy myself seriously with two
little matters which are rather important, my family and my
affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large scale.
I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the
first consideration in my eyes," he added, as he saw a look of
astonishment in the abbe Pirard's eyes. Although a man of
common sense, the abbe was surprised to hear a man talk so
frankly about his pleasures.

" Work doubtless exists in Paris," continued the great lord,
" but it is perched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take
anyone up, he takes an apartment on the second floor, and

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 219

his wife starts a day at home ; the result is no more work and
no more efforts except either to be, or appear to be, a
society man. That is the only thing they bother about, as
soon as they have got their bread and butter.

" For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have,
to put it plainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One
died of consumption the day before yesterday. Taking my
business all round, would you believe, monsieur, that for three
years I have given up all hope of finding a man who deigns,
during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a little
serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only
a preliminary.

" I respect you and would venture to add that, although I
only see you for the first time; to-day, I like you. Will you be
my secretary at a salary of eight hundred francs or even
double. I shall still be the gainer by it, I swear to you, and I
will manage to reserve that fine living for you for the day
when we shall no longer be able to agree." The abbe refused,
but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the Marquis
suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.

" I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young
man who, if I mistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he
were only a simple monk he would be already in pace. So
far this young man only knows Latin and the Holy Scriptures,
but it is not impossible that he will one day exhibit great
talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I do not
know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go
far. I thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had
one who was a little of your way of considering men and
things."

" What is your young man's extraction ? " said the Marquis.

" He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains.
I rath er believe he is the natural son of some rich man. I
have seen him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter
with bill for five hundred francs."

" Oh, it is Julien Sorel," said the Marquis.

" How do you know his name ? " said the abbe, in
astonishment, reddening at his question.

"That's what I'm not going to tell you," answered the
Marquis.

"Well," replied the abbe, "you might try making him

220 THE RED AND THE BLACK

your secretary. He has energy. He has a logical mind. In
a word, it's worth trying."

"Why not?" said the Marquis. "But would he be the
kind of man to allow his palm to be greased by the Prefect of
Police or any one else and then spy on me ? That is only my
objection."

After hearing the favourable assurances of the abbe Pirard,
the Marquis took a thousand franc note.

" Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come
to me."

" One sees at once," said the abbe Pirard, " that you live
in Paris. You do not know the tyranny which weighs us
poor provincials down, and particularly those priests who are
not friendly to the Jesuits. They will refuse to let Julien
Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak themselves in the
most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is ill, that
his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc."

" I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of
these days," answered the Marquis.

" I was forgetting to warn you of one thing," said the abbe.
" This young man, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He
will be of no use if you madden his pride. You will make
him stupid."

" That pleases me," said the Marquis. " I will make him
my son's comrade. Will that be enough for you ? "

Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown
writing, and bearing the Chlon postmark. He found in it
a draft on a Besancon merchant, and instructions to present
himself at Paris without delay. The letter was signed in a
fictitious name, but Julien had felt a thrill in opening it. A
leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It was the agreed
signal between himself and the abbe Pirard.

Within an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's
Palace, where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal
benevolence. My lord quoted Horace and at the same time
complimented him very adroitly on the exalted destiny which
awaited him in Paris in such a way as to elicit an explanation
by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say anything, simply
because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed him
much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric
wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 221

passport, where the name of the traveller had been left in
blank.

Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouque's.
His friend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased
with the future which seemed to await his friend.

" You will finish up," said that Liberal voter, " with a place
in the Government, which will compel you to take some step
which will be calumniated. It will only be by your own
disgrace that I shall have news of you. Remember that,
even from the financial standpoint, it is better to earn a
hundred louis in a good timber business, of which one is his
own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a
Government, even though it were that of King Solomon."

Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit
of a country bourgeois. At last he was going to make an
appearance in the theatre of great events. Everything was
over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness of going to Paris,
which he imagined to be populated by people of intellect, full
of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as the Bishop
of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to
his friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter
by the abbe Pirard's letter.

The following day he arrived at Verrieres about noon. He
felt the happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de
Renal again. He went first to his protector the good abbe
Chelan. He met with a severe welcome.

" Do you think you are under any obligation to me ? " said
M. Chelan to him, without answering his greeting. " You
will take breakfast with me. During that time I will have a
horse hired for you and you will leave Verrieres without
seeing anyone."

" Hearing is obeying," answered Julien with a demeanour
smacking of the seminary, and the only questions now
discussed were theology and classical Latin.

He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving
a wood and not seeing any one who could notice him enter,
he plunged into it. At sunset, he sent away the horse.
Later, he entered the cottage of a peasant, who consented to
sell him a ladder and to follow him with it to the little wood
which commands the Cours de la Fidelite at Verrieres.

" I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript , . .

222 THE RED AND THE BLACK

or a smuggler," said the peasant as he took leave of him, " but
what does it matter ? My ladder has been well paid for, and
I myself have done a thing or two in that line."

The night was very black. Towards one o'clock in the
morning, Julien, laden with his ladder, entered Verrieres.
He descended as soon as he could into the bed of the stream,
which is banked within two walls, and traverses M. de Renal's
magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet. Julien easily
climbed up the ladder. " How will the watch dogs welcome
me," he thought. " It all turns on that." The dogs barked
and galloped towards him, but he whistled softly and they
came and caressed him. Then climbing from terrace to
terrace he easily managed, although all the grills were shut,
to get as far as the window of Madame de Renal's bedroom
which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above
the ground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the
shutters which Julien knew well. To his great disappoint-
ment, this little opening was not illuminated by the flare of
a little night-light inside.

"Good God," he said to himself. "This room is not
occupied by Madame de Renal. Where can she be sleeping ?
The family must be at Verrieres since I have found the dogs
here, but I might meet M. de Renal himself, or even a
stranger in this room without a light, and then what a
scandal ! " The most prudent course was to retreat, but this
idea horrified Julien.

" If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and
leave my ladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome
awaits me ! I can well imagine that she has fallen into a
mood of penitence and the most exalted piety, but after all,
she still has some remembrance of me, since she has written
to me." This bit of reasoning decided him.

With a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her
or perish in the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against
the shutter. No answer. He leaned his long ladder beside
the window, and himself knocked on the shutter, at first
softly, and then more strongly. " However dark it is, they
may still shoot me," thought Julien. This idea made the mad
adventure simply a question of bravery.

"This room is not being slept in to-night," he thought,
"or whatever person might be there would have woken up

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 223

by now. So far as it is concerned, therefore, no further
precautions are needed. I must only try not to be heard by
the persons sleeping in the other rooms."

He descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters,
climbed up again, and placing his hand through the heart-
shaped opening, was fortunate enough to find pretty quickly
the wire which is attached to the hook which closed the
shutter. He pulled this wire. It was with an ineffable joy
that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back, and
yielded to his effort.

I must open it bit by bit and let her recognise my voice.
He opened the shutter enough to pass his head through it,
while he repeated in a low voice, " It's a friend."

He pricked up his ears and assured himself that nothing
disturbed the profound silence of the room, but there could
be no doubt about it, there was no light, even half-extinguished,
on the mantelpiece. It was a very bad sign.

" Look out for the gun-shot," he reflected a little, then he
ventured to knock against rhe window with his finger. No
answer. He knocked harder. I must finish it one way or
another, even if I have to break the window. When he was
knocking very hard, he thought he could catch a glimpse
through the darkness of something like a white shadow that
was crossing the room. At last there was no doubt about it.
He saw a shadow which appeared to advance with extreme
slowness. Suddenly he saw a cheek placed against the pane
to which his eye was glued.

He shuddered and went away a little, but the night was so
black that he could not, even at this distance, distinguish if it
were Madame de Renal. He was frightened of her crying out
at first in alarm. He heard the dogs prowling and growling
around the foot of the ladder. " It is I," he repeated fairly
loudly. " A friend."

No answer. The white phantom had disappeared.

" Deign to open to me. I must speak to you. I am too
unhappy." And he knocked hard enough to break the
pane.

A crisp sound followed. The casement fastening of the
window yielded. He pushed the casement and leaped lightly
into the room.

The white phantom flitted away from him. He took hold

224 THE RED AND THE BLACK

of its arms. It was a woman. All his ideas of courage
vanished. " If it is she, what is she going to say?" What
were his emotions when a little cry gave him to understand,
that it was Madame de Renal ?

He clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely
had the strength to push him away.

" Unhappy man. What are you doing ? " Her agonised
voice could scarcely articulate the words.

Julien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine
indignation.

" I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more
than fourteen months."

" Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chelan, why did you
prevent me writing to him ? I could then have foreseen this
horror." She pushed him away with a truly extraordinary
strength. " Heaven has deigned to enlighten me," she repeated
in a broken voice. " Go away ! Flee ! "

"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly
not leave you without a word. I want to know all you have
done. Yes, I have loved you enough to deserve this con-
fidence. I want to know everything." This authoritative
tone dominated Madame de Renal's heart in spite of herself.
Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her
efforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This
reassured Madame de Renal a little.

" I will take away the ladder," he said, " to prevent it com-
promising us in case some servant should be awakened by the
noise, and go on a round."

" Oh leave me, leave me ! " she cried with an admirable
anger. " What do men matter to me ! It is God who sees
the awful scene you are now making. You are abusing
meanly the sentiments which I had for you but have no
longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien ? ''

He took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a
noise.

" Is your husband in town, dear," he said to her not in
order to defy her but as a sheer matter of habit.

" Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my
husband. I feel only too guilty in not having sent you away
before. I pity you," she said to him, trying to wound his,
as she well knew, irritable pride

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 225

This refusal of all endearments, this abrupt way of breaking
so tender a tie which he thought still subsisted, carried the
transports of Julien's love to the point of delirium.

" What ! is it possible you do not love me ? " he said to her,
with one of those accents that come straight from the heart
and impose a severe strain on the cold equanimity of the
listener.

She did not answer. As for him, he wept bitterly.

In fact he had no longer the strength to speak.

" So I am completely forgotten by the one being who ever
loved me, what is the good of living on henceforth ? " As
soon as he had no longer to fear the danger of meeting a man
all his courage had left him; his heart now contained no
emotion except that of love.

He wept for a long time in silence.

He took her hand ; she tried to take it away, and after a
few almost convulsive moments, surrendered it to him. It
was extremely dark; they were both sitting on MaJame de
Renal's bed.

" What a change from fourteen months ago," thought
Julien, and his tears redoubled. "So absence is really
bound to destroy all human sentiments."

" Deign to tell me what has happened to you ? " Julien
said at last.

" My follies," answered Madame de Renal in a hard voice
whose frigid intonation contained in it a certain element of
reproach, " were no doubt known in the town when you left,
your conduct was so imprudent. Some time afterwards when
I was in despair the venerable Chelan came to see me. He
tried in vain for a long time to obtain a confession. One day
he took me to that church at Dijon where I made my first

communion. In that place he ventured to speak himself "

Madame de Renal was interrupted by her tears. " What a
moment of shame. I confessed everything. The good man
was gracious enough not to overwhelm me with the weight of
his indignation. He grieved with me. During that time I
used to write letters to you every day which I never ventured
to send. I hid them carefully and when I was more than
usually unhappy I shut myself up in my room and read over
my letters."

" At last M. Chelan induced me to hand them over to him,

5

226 THE RED AND THE BLACK

some of them written a little more discreetly were sent to you,
you never answered."

" I never received any letters from you, I swear ! "

" Great heavens ! Who can have intercepted them ?
Imagine my grief until the day I saw you in the cathedral.
I did not know if you were still alive."

" God granted me the grace of understanding how much I
was sinning towards Him, towards my children, towards my
husband," went on Madame de Renal. " He never loved me
in the way that I then thought that you had loved me."

Julien rushed into her arms, as a matter of fact without any
particular purpose and feeling quite beside himself. But
Madame de Renal repelled him and continued fairly firmly.

" My venerable friend, M. Chelan, made me understand that
in marrying I had plighted all my affections, even those which I
did not then know, and which I had never felt before a certain
fatal attachment . . . after the great sacrifice of the letters
that were so dear to me, my life has flowed on, if not happily,
at any rate calmly. Do not disturb it. Be a friend to me,
my best friend." Julien covered her hand with kisses. She
perceived he was still crying. " Do not cry, you pain me so
much. Tell me, in your turn, what you have been doing,"
Julien was unable to speak. " I want to know the life you lead
at the seminary," she repeated. "And then you will go."

Without thinking about what he was saying Julien spoke ol
the numberless intrigues and jealousies which he had first en
countered, and then of the great serenity of his life after h
had been made a tutor.

" It was then," he added, " that after a long silence which was
no doubt intended to make me realise what I see only too clearly
to-day, that you no longer loved me and that I had become
a matter of indifference to you. . . ."

Madame de Renal wrung her hands.

" It was then that you sent me the sum of five hundred
francs."

" Never," said Madame de Renal.

" It was a letter stamped Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as
to avert suspicion."

There was a little discussion about how the letter could
possibly have originated.

The psychological situation was altered. Without knowing

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 227

it Julien had abandoned his solemn tone; they were now
once more on the footing of a tender affection. It was so
dark that they did not see each other but the tone of their
voices was eloquent of everything. Julien clasped his arm
round- his love's waist. This movement had its dangers.
She tr ed to put Julien's arms away from her ; at this juncture
he cleverly diverted her attention by an interesting detail in
his story. The arm was practically forgotten and remained in
its present position.

After many conjectures as to the origin of the five hundred
francs letter, Julien took up his story. He regained a little of
his self-control as he spoke of his past life, which compared
with what he was now experiencing interested him so little.
His attention was now concentrated on the final outcome of
of his visit. " You will have to go," were the curt words he
heard from time to time.

" What a disgrace for me if I am dismissed. My remorse
will embitter all my life," he said to himself, " she will never
write to me. God knows when I shall come back to this part
of the country. From this moment Julien's heart became
rapidly oblivious of all the heavenly delights of his present
position.

Seated as he was close to a woman whom he adored and
practically clasping her in his arms in this room, the scene of his
former happiness, amid a deep obscurity, seeing quite clearly as
he did that she had just started crying, and feeling that she was
sobbing from the heaving of her chest, he was unfortunate
enough to turn into a cold diplomatist, nearly as cold as in
those days when in the courtyard of the seminary he found
himself the butt of some malicious joke on the part of one of
his comrades who was stronger than he was. Julien pro-
tracted his story by talking of his unhappy life since his
departure from Verrieres.

" So," said Madame de Renal to herself, " after a year's
absence and deprived almost entirely of all tokens of memory
while I myself was forgetting him, he only thought of the
happy days that he had had in Verrieres." Her sobs redoubled.
Julien saw the success of his story. He realised that he must
play his last card. He abruptly mentioned a letter he had
just received from Paris.

" I have taken leave of my Lord Bishop."

228 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" What ! you are not going back to Besangon ? You are
leaving us for ever ? "

" Yes," answered Julien resolutely, " yes, I am leaving a
country where I have been forgotten even by the woman
whom I loved more than anyone in my life; I am leaving
it and I shall never see it again. I am going to Paris."

u You are going to Paris, dear," exclaimed Madame Renal.

Her voice was almost choked by her tears and showed the
extremity of her trouble. Julien had need of this encourage-
ment. He was on the point of executing a manoeuvre which
might decide everything against him ; and up to the time of
this exclamation he could not tell what effect he was
producing as he was unable to see. He no longer hesitated.
The fear of remorse gave him complete control over himself.
He coldly added as he got up.

" Yes, madame, I leave you for ever. May you be happy.
Adieu."

He moved some steps towards the window. He began to
open it. Madame de Renal rushed to him and threw herself
into his arms. So it was in this way that, after a dialogue
lasting three hours, Julien obtained what he desired so
passionately during the first two hours.

Madame de Renal's return to her tender feelings and this
overshadowing of her remorse would have been a divine
happiness had they come a little earlier; but, as they had
been obtained by artifice, they were simply a pleasure.
Julien insisted on lighting the nightlight in spite of his
mistress's opposition.

" Do you wish me then," he said to her " to have no
recollection of having seen you." Is the love in those
charming eyes to be lost to me for ever ? Is the whiteness
of that pretty hand to remain invisible ? Remember that
perhaps I am leaving you for a very long time."

Madame de Renal could refuse him nothing. His argument
made her melt into tears. But the dawn was beginning to
throw into sharp relief the outlines of the pine trees on
the mountain east of Verrieres. Instead of going away
Julien, drunk with pleasure, asked Madame de Renal to let him
pass the day in her room and leave the following night.

"And why not?" she answered. " This fatal relapse robs
me of all my respect and will mar all my life," and she

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 229

pressed him to her heart. My husband is no longer the
same ; he has suspicions, he believes I led him the way I
wanted in all this business, and shows great irritation
against me. If he hears the slightest noise I shall be
ruined, he will hound me out like the unhappy woman that
I am."

" Ah here we have a phrase of M. Chelan's," said Julien
" you would not have talked like that before my cruel departure
to the seminary ; in those days you used to love me,"

Julien was rewarded for the frigidity which he put into
those words. He saw his love suddenly forget the danger
which her husband's presence compelled her to run, in
thinking of the much greater danger of seeing Julien doubt
her love. The daylight grew rapidly brighter and vividly
illuminated the room. Julien savoured once more all the
deliciousness of pride, when he saw this charming woman in
his arms and almost at his feet, the only woman whom he
had ever loved, and who had been entirely absorbed only a
few hours before by her fear of a terrible God and her
devotion to her duties. Resolutions, fortified by a year's
persuasion, had failed to hold out against his courage.

They soon heard a noise in the house. A matter that
Madame de Renal had not thought of began to trouble
her.

"That wicked Elisa will come into the room. What are we
to do with this enormous ladder ? " she said to her sweetheart,
" where are we to hide it ? I will take it to the loft," she
exclaimed suddenly half playfully.

" But you will have to pass through the servants' room,"
said Julien in astonishment.

" I will leave the ladder in the corridor and will call the
servant and send him on an errand."

" Think of some explanation to have ready in the event
of a servant passing the ladder and noticing it in the
corridor."

" Yes, my angel," said Madame de Renal giving him a kiss
" as for you, dear, remember to hide under the bed pretty
quickly if Elisa enters here during my absence."

Julien was astonished by this sudden gaiety "So" he
thought, " the approach of a real danger instead of troubling
her gives her back her spirits before she forgets her remorse.

230 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Truly a superior woman. Yes, that's a heart over which
it is glorious to reign." Julien was transported with
delight.

Madame de Renal took the ladder, which was obviously too
heavy for her. Julien went to her help. He was admiring
that elegant figure which was so far from betokening any
strength when she suddenly seized the ladder without
assistance and took it up as if it had been a chair. She took
it rapidly into the corridor of the third storey where she laid
it alongside the wall. She called a servant, and in order to
give him time to dress himself, went up into the dovecot.

Five minutes later, when she came back to the corridor,
she found no signs of the ladder. What had happened to it ?
If Julien had been out of the house she would not have
minded the danger in the least. But supposing her husband
were to see the ladder just now, the incident might be awful.
Madame de Renal ran all over the house.

Madame de Renal finally discovered the ladder under the
roof where the servant had carried it and even hid it.

" What does it matter what happens in twenty-four hours,"
she thought, " when Julien will be gone ? "

She had a vague idea that she ought to take leave of life
but what mattered her duty ? He was restored to her after a
separation which she had thought eternal. She was seeing
him again and the efforts he had made to reach her showed
the extent of his love.

" What shall I say to my husband," she said to him. " If
the servant tells him he found this ladder ? " She was pensive
for a moment. " They will need twenty-four hours to discover
the peasant who sold it to you." And she threw herself into
Julien's arms and clasped him convulsively.

" Oh, if I could only die like this," she cried covering him
with kisses. " But you mustn't die of starvation," she said
with a smile.

" Come, I will first hide you in Madame Derville's room
which is always locked." She went and watched at the other
end of the corridor and Julien ran in. " Mind you don't try
and open if any one knocks," she said as she locked him in.
" Anyway it would only be a frolic of the children as they
play together."

" Get them to come into the garden under the window,"

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 231

said Julien, " so that I may have the pleasure of seeing them.
Make them speak."

" Yes, yes," cried Madame de Renal to him as she went
away. She soon returned with oranges, biscuits and a bottle
of Malaga wine. She had not been able to steal any bread.

" What is your husband doing ? " said Julien.

" He is writing out the figures of the bargains he is going to
make with the peasants."

But eight o'clock had struck and they were making a lot of
noise in the house. If Madame de Renal failed to put in an
appearance, they would look for her all over the house. She
was obliged to leave him. Soon she came back, in defiance
of all prudence, bringing him a cup of coffee. She was
frightened lest he should die of starvation.

She managed after breakfast to bring the children under
the window of Madame Derville's room. He thought they
had grown a great deal, but they had begun to look common,
or else his ideas had changed. Madame de Renal spoke to
them about Julien. The elder answered in an affectionate
tone and regretted his old tutor, but he found that the younger
children had almost forgotten him.

M. de Renal did not go out that morning ; he was going up
and downstairs incessantly engaged in bargaining with some
peasants to whom he was selling potatoes.

Madame de Renal did not have an instant to give to her
prisoner until dinner-time. When the bell had been rung
and dinner had been served, it occurred to her to steal a plate
of warm soup for him. As she noiselessly approached the
door of the room which he occupied, she found herself face
to face with the servant who had hid the ladder in the
morning. At the time he too was going noiselessly along the
corridor, as though listening for something. The servant
took himself off in some confusion.

Madame de Renal boldly entered Julien's room. The
news of this encounter made him shudder.

" You are frightened," she said to him, " but I would brave
all the dangers in the world without flinching. There is only
one thing I fear, and that is the moment when I shall be alone
after you have left," and she left him and ran downstairs.

"Ah," thought Julien ecstatically, "remorse is the only
panger which this sublime soul is afraid of."

232 THE RED AND THE BLACK

At last evening came. Monsieur de Renal went to the
Casino.

His wife had given out that she was suffering from an
awful headache. She went to her room, hastened to dismiss
Elisa and quickly got up in order to let Julien out.

He was literally starving. Madame de Renal went to the
pantry to fetch some bread. Julien heard a loud cry.
Madame de Renal came back and told him that when she
went to the dark pantry and got near the cupboard where
they kept the bread, she had touched a woman's arm as she
stretched out her hand. It was Elisa who had uttered the
cry Julien had heard.

" What was she doing there ? "

"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us," said Madame
de Renal with complete indifference, " but luckily I found a
pie and a big loaf of bread."

" But what have you got there ? " said Julien pointing to
the pockets of her apron.

Madame de Renal had forgotten that they had been filled
with bread since dinner.

Julien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion.
She had never seemed to him so beautiful. " I could not
meet a woman of greater character even at Paris," he said
confusedly to himself. She combined all the clumsiness of a
woman who was but little accustomed to paying attentions of
this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who is
only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a
different kind of awfulness.

While Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite
and his sweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the
meal, the door of the room was suddenly shaken violently.
It was M. de Renal.

" Why have you shut yourself in ? " he cried to her.

Julien had only just time to slip under the sofa.

On any ordinary day Madame de Renal would have been
upset by this question which was put with true conjugal
harshness ; but she realised that M. de Renal had only to bend
down a little to notice Julien, for M. de Renal had flung
himself into the chair opposite the sofa which Julien had been
sitting in one moment before.

Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While

AN AMBITIOUS MAN 233

her husband on his side went into a long-winded account of
the billiards pool which he had won at Casino, "yes, to be
sure a nineteen franc pool," he added. She noticed Julien's hat
on a chair three paces in front of them. Her self-possession
became twice as great, she began to undress, and rapidly
passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over
the chair with the hat on it.

At last M. de Renal left. She begged Julien to start over
again his account of his life at the Seminary. " I was not
listening to you yesterday all the time you were speaking, I
was only thinking of prevailing on myself to send you away."

She was the personification of indiscretion. They talked
very loud and about two o'clock in the morning they were
interrupted by a violent knock at the door. It was M. de
Renal again.

" Open quickly, there are thieves in the house ! " he said.
" Saint Jean found their ladder this morning."

" This is the end of everything," cried Madame de Renal,
throwing herself into Julien's arms. " He will kill both of us,
he doesn't believe there are any thieves. I will die in your
arms, and be more happy in my death than I ever was in my
life." She made no attempt to answer her husband who was
beginning to lose his temper, but started kissing Julien
passionately.

" Save Stanislas's mother," he said to her with an imperious
look. " I will jump down into the courtyard through the
lavatory window, and escape in the garden ; the dogs have
recognised me. Make my clothes into a parcel and throw
them into the garden as soon as you can. In the meanwhile
let him break the door down. But above all, no confession,
I forbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect
rather than be certain."

" You will kill yourself as you jump ! " was her only answer
and her only anxiety.

She went with him to the lavatory window ; she then took
sufficient time to hide his clothes. She finally opened the
door to her husband who was boiling with rage. He looked
in the room and in the lavatory without saying a word and
disappeared. Julien's clothes were thrown down to him ; he
seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden
in the direction of the Doubs.

234 THE RED AND THE BLACK

As he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and
heard at the same time the report of a gun.

" It is not M. de Renal," he thought, " he's far too bad a
shot." The dogs ran silently at his side, the second shot
apparently broke the paw of one dog, for he began to whine
piteously. Julien jumped the wall of the terrace, did fifty
paces under cover, and began to fly in another direction. He
heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy the
servant firing a gun ; a farmer also began to shoot away from
the other side of the garden. Julien had already reached the
bank of the Doubs where he dressed himself.

An hour later he was a league from Verrieres on the Geneva
road. "If they had suspicions," thought Julien, "they will
look for me on the Paris road."

CHAPTER XXXI

HE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY

O rus quando ego te aspirfam? Horace

" You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail," Monsieur,
said the host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast.

"To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien.

The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent.
There were two free places.

"Why ! it's you my poor Falcoz," said the traveller who was
coming from the Geneva side to the one who was getting in at
the same time as Julien.

" I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons,"
said Falcoz, " in a delicious valley near the Rhne."

" Nicely settled ! I am running away."

" What ! you are running away ? you Saint Giraud ! Have
you, who look so virtuous, committed some crime?" said
Falcoz with a smile.

" On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running
away from the abominable life which one leads in the pro-
vinces. I like the freshness of the woods and the country
tranquillity, as you know. You have often accused me 01
being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as long
as I live, and politics are hounding me out."

" But what party do you belong to ? "

"To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to
be said about my political life I like music and painting. A
good book is an event for me. I am going to be forty-four.
How much longer have I got to live ? Fifteen twenty thirty
years at the outside. Well, I want the ministers in thirty
years' time to be a little cleverer than those of to-day but quite
as honest. The history of England serves as a mirror for our

236 THE RED AND THE BLACK

own future. There will always be a king who will try to in-
crease his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy,
the fame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs
which he won for himself will always prevent the rich people
in the province from going to sle^p : they will call that being
Liberal and loving the people. The desire of becoming a
peer or a gentleman of the chamoer will always win over the
ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take
over the steering because it is well paid. Will there be never
a poor little place for the simple passenger ? "

" Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the
province ? "

" My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was
forty and possessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older
to-day and probably 50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose
that sum on the sale of my chteau of Monfleury in a superb
position near the Rhne.

" At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is
rendered obligatory by what you call nineteenth-century
civilisation. I thirsted for good nature and simplicity. I
bought an estate in the mountains near the Rhne, there was
no more beautiful place under the heavens.

" The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay
me court for six months ; I invite them to dinner ; I have left
Paris, I tell them, so as to avoid talking politics or hearing
politics talked for the rest of my life. As you know I do not
subscribe to any paper, the less letters the postman brought
me the happier I was.

" That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of
a thousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished
to give two or three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was
asked to give it to the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph,
that of the Virgin, etc. I refused. I was then insulted in a
hundred ways. I was foolish enough to be upset by it. I
could not go out in the morning to enjoy the beauty of our
mountain without finding some annoyance which distracted
me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and
their wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance
whose chanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they
will not bless my fields because, says the clergyman, they
belong to an infidel. A cow dies belonging to a devout old

THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY 237

peasant woman. She says the reason is the neighbourhood of
a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a philosopher coming
from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my fish in agonies
poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops me. The
justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of
losing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the
country proved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was
abandoned by the vicar, the head of the village congregation,
and that I was not supported by the retired captain who was
the head of the Liberals they all fell upon me, down to the
mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very
wheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the
repairing of my ploughs.

" In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some
of my law suits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those
damned elections come along. They asked me for my vote."
" For an unknown man ? "

" Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I re-
fused. It was terribly imprudent. From that moment I had
the Liberals on my hands as well, and my position became
intolerable. I believe that if the vicar had got it into his head
to accuse me of assassinating my servant, there would be
twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that they
had seen me committing the crime."

" You mean to say you want to live in the country without
pandering to the passions of your neighbours, without even
listening to their gossip. What a mistake ! "

" It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose
50,000 francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving
that hell of hypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for
solitude and rustic peace in the only place where those things
are to be found in France, on a fourth storey looking on to the .
Champs-Elysees ; and, moreover, I am actually deliberating if I
shall not commence my political career by giving consecrated
bread to the parish in the Roule quarter."

" All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said
Falcoz with eyes shining with rage and sorrow.

" Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to
keep his position? Everything which I suffer to-day is his
work."

At this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had

238 THE RED AND THE BLACK

realised from the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was
the old boyhood friend of M. de Renal, who had been repudiated
by him in 18 16, and that the philosopher Saint-Giraud must

be the brother of that chief of the prefecture of who

managed to get the houses of the municipality knocked down
to him at a cheap price.

" And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest
man, aged forty, and possessed of five hundred thousand francs
however inoffensive he is, cannot settle in the provinces
and find peace there ; those priests and nobles of his will turn
him out."

" Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz. " France
was never so high in the esteem of the nations as during the
thirteen years of his reign ; then every single act was great."

" Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-
four, "was only great on his battle fields and when he re-
organised the finances about 1802. What is the meaning of
all his conduct since then ? What with his chamberlains, his
pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries, he has simply pro-
vided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery. It
was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a
century or two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back
to the old one, but they did not have the iron hand necessary
to impose it on the public."

" Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk."

"Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the
printer, angrily. "The priests, whom Napoleon called back
by his Concordat instead of treating them like the State treats
doctors, barristers, and astronomers, simply seeing in them
ordinary citizens, and not bothering about the particular
calling by which they are trying to earn their livelihood. Should
we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today, if your
Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they
were out of fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country
nobility who have annoyed me the most, and compelled me
to become a Liberal."

The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy
France for another half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always
repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien
timidly suggested the case of M. de Renal.

" Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz

THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY 239

" He turned spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider
into the bargain. But I see that he is beaten by that man
Valenod. Do you know that scoundrel ? He's the villain of
the piece. What will your M. de Renal say if he sees himself
turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod put in his
place ? "

" He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-
Giraud. " Do you know Verrieres, young man ? Well,
Bonaparte, heaven confound him ! Bonaparte and his
monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign of the
Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of
the Valenods and the Maslons."

This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished
Julien and distracted him from his delicious reveries.

He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived
in the distance. The castles in the air he had built about his
future had to struggle with the still present memory of the
twenty-four hours that he had just passed in Verrieres. He
vowed that he would never abandon his mistress's children,
and that he would leave everything in order to protect
them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a
republic and the persecution of the nobles.

What would have happened on the night of his arrival in
Verrieres if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder
against the casement of Madame de Renal's bedroom he had
found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Renal ?

But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours
when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him
away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in
the darkness ! A soul like Julien's is haunted by such
memories for a lifetime. The rest of the interview was
already becoming merged in the first period of their love,
fourteen months previous.

Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the
stopping of the coach. They had just entered the courtyard
of the Post in the Rue Rousseau. " I want to go to La
Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which approached.

" At this time, Monsieur what for ? "

" What's that got to do with you ? Get on."

Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in
my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neigh-

2 4 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

bour always insists on one's considering him a great deal. I
shall refrain from recounting Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison.
He wept. What ! in spite of those wretched white walls,
built this very year, which cut the path up into bits ? Yes,
monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to
choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.

In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to
the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.

A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He
was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero.

" So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy.
Here reign the protectors of the abbe de Frilair." On the
evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan
of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbe
Pirard. The abbe explained to him coldly the kind of life
which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's.

" If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some
months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace.
You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the
greatest seigneurs of France. You will wear black, but like a
man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic. I insist
on your following your theological studies three days a week
in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day at twelve
o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library ; he
counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning
his lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on
the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is
required. I have assured him that at the end of three months
you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of
every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be
able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o'clock,
you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.

" It may be," continued the abbe Pirard, " that some old lady
or some smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages,
or will crudely offer you gold, to show him the letters which
the marquis has received."

" Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing.

" It is singular," said the abbe with a bitter smile, " that
poor as you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have
any of this virtuous indignation left. You must have been
very blind."

THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY 241

"Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbe in a
whisper, as though speaking to himself. " The singular thing
is," he added, looking at Julien, " that the marquis knows you
I don't know how. He will give you a salary of a hundred
louis to commence with. He is a man who only acts by his
whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about
the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may
rise in consequence up to eight thousand francs.

" But you realise," went on the abbe, sourly, " that he is
not giving you all this money simply on account of your
personal charm. The thing is to prove yourself useful. If I
were in your place I would talk very little, and I would never
talk about what I know nothing about.

" Oh, yes," said the abbe, " I have made some enquiries for
you. I was forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two
children a daughter and a son of nineteen, eminently elegant
the kind of madman who never knows to-day what he will
do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour ; he has been through
the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why, that
you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I
told him that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons
on your teaching his son some ready-made phrases about
Cicero and Virgil.

" If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young
man to make fun of me, and before I accepted his advances,
which you will find perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would
make him repeat them more than once.

" I will not hide from you the fact that the young count
de La Mole is bound to despise you at first, because you are
nothing more than a little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged
to the court, and had the honour of having his head cut off in
the Place de Greve on the 26th April, 1574, on account of a
political intrigue.

" As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres,
and what is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder
well over these differences, and look up the family history in
Moreri. All the flatterers who dine at their house make from
time to time what they call delicate allusions to it.

" Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the
count de La Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future
peer of France, and don't come and complain to me later on."

1$

242 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, " that I
ought not even to answer a man who despises me."

" You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest
itself by inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might
be taken in by it. If you want to make your fortune, you
ought to let yourself be taken in by it."

" Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, " if I
return to my little cell Number 108 when I find that all this
no longer suits me ? "

" All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you,"
said the abbe, " but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum
qui feci. I will say that I am responsible for that resolution."

Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive
tone which he noticed in M. Pirard ; that tone completely
infected his last answer.

The fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about
loving Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he
took so direct a part in another's life.

" You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as
though accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame
the marquise de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about
forty, devout, perfectly polite, and even more insignificant. She
is the daughter of the old Duke de Chaulnes so well known
for his aristocratic prejudices. This great lady is a kind of
synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental characteristics
of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own
part that the possession of ancestors who went through the
crusades is the sole advantage which she respects. Money
only comes a long way afterwards. Does that astonish you ?
We are no longer in the provinces, my friend.

" You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our
princes in a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de
la Mole, she lowers her voice out of respect every time she
mentions the name of a Prince, and above all the name of a
Princess. I would not advise you to say in her hearing that
Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings,
a fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of
creatures without birth like you and me. Nevertheless,"
added M. Pirard, " we are priests, for she will take you for one ;
that being our capacity, she considers us as spiritual valets
necessary for her salvation."

THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY 243

" Monsieur," said Julien, " I do not think I shall be long
at Paris."

" Good, but remember that no man of our class can make
his fortune except through the great lords. With that indefin-
able element in your character, at any rate I think it is, you will
be persecuted if you do not make your fortune. There is no
middle course for you, make no mistake about it ; people see
that they do not give you pleasure when they speak to you ;
in a social country like this you are condemned to unhappi-
ness if you do not succeed in winning respect."

What would have become of you at Besancon without this
whim of the marquis de la Mole ? One day you will realise
the extraordinary extent of what he has done for you, and
if you are not a monster you will be eternally grateful to him
and his family. How many poor abbes more learned than
you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they
got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their
dissertations in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told
you last winter about the first years of that bad man Cardinal
Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance to think yourself
more talented than he was ? "

"Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I
reckoned on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough
to get attached to it. Well I was on the point of being turned
out, when I handed in my resignation. You know what my
fortune consisted of. I had five hundred and twenty francs
capital neither more nor less, not a friend, scarcely two or
three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never
seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say
the word and I was given a living where the parishioners are
well-to-do people above all crude vices, and where the income
puts me to shame, it is so disproportionate to my work. I
refrained from talking to you all this time simply to enable
you to find your level a bit.

" One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It
is possible that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms.

" If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of
her son make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise
you to finish your studies in some seminary thirty leagues
from Paris and rather north than south. There is more
civilisation in the north, and, he added lowering his voice, I

244 THE RED AND THE BLACK

must admit that the nearness of the Paris papers puts fear
into our petty tyrants.

" If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and
if the marquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the
post of my curate, and will go equal shares with you in what
I get from the living. I owe you that and even more, he
added interrupting Julien's thanks, for the extraordinary offer
which you made me at Besancon. If instead of having five
hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you would have
saved me."

The abbe's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was
ashamed to feel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious
to throw himself into his friend's arms. He could not help
saying to him in the most manly manner he could assume :

" I was hated by my father from the cradle ; it was one of
my great misfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my
luck, I have found another father in you, monsieur."

" That is good, that is good," said the embarrassed abbe,
then suddenly remembering quite appropriately a seminary
platitude " you must never say luck, my child, always say
providence."

The fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze
knocker of an immense door. It was the Hotel de la Mole,
and to prevent the passers by having any doubt on the subject
these words could be read in black marble over the door.

This affectation displeased Julien. " They are so frightened
of the Jacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril
behind every head. Their panic is often gloriously grotesque
and they advertise their house like this so that in the event
of a rising the rabble can recognise it and loot it." He
communicated his thought to the abbe Pirard.

" Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a
dreadful idea you have got into your head."

" Nothing could be simpler," said Julien.

The gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the
the court, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine.
" What magnificent architecture," he said to his friend. The
hotel in question was one of those buildings of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain with a flat facade built about the time of
Voltaire's death. At no other period had fashion and beauty
been so far from one another.

CHAPTER XXXII

ENTRY INTO SOCIETY

Ludicrous and pathetic memory : the first drawing-room where
one appeared alone and without support at the age of eighteen !
the look of a woman sufficed to intimidate me. The more I wished
to please the more clumsy I became. I evolved the most unfounded
ideas about everything. I would either abandon myself without
any reason, or I would regard a man as an enemy simply because
he had looked at me with a serious air ; but all the same, in the
middle of the unhappiness of my timidity, how beautiful did I find
a beautiful day Kant.

Julien stopped in amazement in the middle of the courtyard.
" Pull yourself together," said the abbe Pirard. " You get
horrible ideas into your head, besides you are only a child. '
What has happened to the nil mirari of Horace (no enthusiasm)
remember that when they see you established here this crowd
of lackeys will make fun of you. They will see in you an equal
who has been unjustly placed above them ; and, under a
masquerade of good advice and a desire to help you, they
will try to make you fall into some gross blunder."

" Let them do their worst," said Julien biting his lip, and
he became as distrustful as ever.

The salons on the first storey which our gentlemen went
through before reaching the marquis' study, would have seemed
to you, my reader, as gloomy as they were magnificent. If
they had been given to you just as they were, you would have
refused to live in them. This was the domain of yawning and
melancholy reasoning. They redoubled Julien's rapture.
" How can any one be unhappy ? " he thought, " who lives in so
splendid an abode."

Finally our gentlemen arrived at the ugliest rooms in this
superb suite. There was scarcely any light. They found
there a little keen man with a lively eye and a blonde wig.

246 THE RED AND THE BLACK

The abbe turned round to Julien and presented him. It was
the marquis. Julien had much difficulty in recognising him,
he found his manner was so polite. It was no longer the grand
seigneur with that haughty manner of the abbey of Bray-le-Haut.
Julien thought that his wig had much too many hairs. As the
result of this opinion he was not at all intimidated. The
descendant of the friend of Henry III. seemed to him at first
of a rather insignificant appearance. He was extremely thin
and very restless, but he soon noticed that the marquis had a
politeness which was even more pleasant to his listener than
that of the Bishop of Besancon himself. The audience only
lasted three minutes. As they went out the abbe said to
Julien,

" You looked at the marquis just as you would have looked
at a picture. I am not a great expert in what these people
here call politeness. You will soon know more about it than
I do, but really the boldness of your looks seemed scarcely
polite."

They had got back into the fiacre. The driver stopped
near the boulevard ; the abbe ushered Julien into a suite of
large rooms. Julien noticed that there was no furniture. He
was looking at the magnificent gilded clock representing a
subject which he thought very indecent, when a very elegant
gentleman approached him with a smiling air. Julien bowed
slightly.

The gentleman smiled and' put his hand on his shoulder.
Julien shuddered and leapt back, he reddened with rage.
The abbe Pirard, in spite of his gravity, laughed till the tears
came into his eyes. The gentleman was a tailor.

" I give you your liberty for two days," said the abbe as
they went out. You cannot be introduced before then to
Madame de la Mole. Any one else would watch over you as
if you were a young girl during these first few moments of
your life in this new Babylon. Get ruined at once if you
have got to be ruined, and I will be rid of my own weakness
of being fond of you. The day after to-morrow this tailor
will bring you two suits, you will give the man who tries them
on five francs. Apart from that don't let these Parisians hear
the sound of your voice. If you say a word they will manage
somehow to make fun of you. They have a talent for it.
Come and see me the dayafter to-morrow at noon. ... Go

ENTRY INTO SOCIETY 247

and ruin yourself. ... I was forgetting, go and order boots
and a hat at these addresses."

Julien scrutinised the handwriting of the addresses.

"It's the marquis's hand," said the abbe; "he is an
energetic man who foresees everything, and prefers doing to
ordering. He is taking you into his house, so that you may
spare him that kind of trouble. Will you have enough brains
to execute efficiently all the instructions which he will give you
with scarcely a word of explanation ? The future will show,
look after yourself."

Julien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without
saying a single word. He observed that he was received with
respect, and that the bootmaker as he wrote his name down
in the ledger put M. de Sorel.

When he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very
obliging gentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in
his views, suggested that he should show Julien the tomb of
Marshal Ney which a sagacious statecraft had deprived of the
honour of an epitaph, but when he left this Liberal, who with
tears in his eyes almost clasped him in his arms, Julien was
without his watch. Enriched by this experience two days
afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked
at him for a long time.

" Perhaps you are going to become a fop," said the abbe to
him severely. Julien looked like a very young man in full
mourning ; as a matter of fact, he looked very well, but the
good abbe was too provincial himself to see that Julien still
carried his shoulders in that particular way which signifies in
the provinces both elegance and importance. When the
marquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so
radically from that of the good abbe as he said,

" Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking
some dancing lessons ? "

The abbe was thunderstruck.

" No," he answered at last. " Julien is not a priest."

The marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase
two at a time, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which
looked out on the big garden of the hotel. He asked him
how many shirts he had got at the linen drapers.

"Two," answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a
lord condescend to such details.

248 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" Very good," replied the marquis quite seriously, and with
a certain curt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought.
" Very good, get twenty-two more shirts. Here are your first
quarter's wages."

As he went down from the attic the marquis called an old
man. " Arsene," he said to him, " you will serve M. Sorel."
A few minutes afterwards Julien found himself alone in a
magnificent library. It was a delicious moment. To prevent
his emotion being discovered he went and hid in a little dark
corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the
brilliant backs of the books. " I shall be able to read all
these," he said to himself. " How can I fail to like it here ?
M. de Renal would have thought himself dishonoured for ever
by doing one-hundredth part of what the Marquis de la Mole
has just done for me.

" But let me have a look at the copies I have to make.
Having finished this work Julien ventured to approach the
books. He almost went mad with joy as he opened an
edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the door of the
library to avoid being surprised. He then indulged in the
luxury of opening each of the eighty volumes. They were
magnificently bound and were the masterpiece of the best
binder in London. It was even more than was required to
raise Julien's admiration to the maximum.

An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised
to notice that Julien spelt cela with two "11" cella. "Is all
that the abbe told me of his knowledge simply a fairy tale ? "
The marquis was greatly discouraged and gently said to him,

" You are not sure of your spelling ? "

" That is true," said Julien without thinking in the least of
the injustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome
by the kindness of the marquis which recalled to him through
sheer force of contrast the superciliousness of M. de Renal.

"This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of
time," thought the marquis, " but I had such great need of a
reliable man."

"You spell cela with one '1,'" said the marquis to him,
" and when you have finished your copies look the words
whose spelling you are not sure of up in the dictionary."

The marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at
Julien's boots with manifest pain. " I am sorry for a mistake

ENTRY INTO SOCIETY 249

1 made. I did not tell you that you must dress every day at
half-past five."

Julien looked at him but did not understand.

11 1 mean to say put on stockings. Arsene will remind you.
To-day I will make your apologies."

As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien
into a salon resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions
M. de Renal always made a point of doubling his pace so as
to have the privilege of being the first to pass the threshold.
His former employer's petty vanity caused Julien to tread on
the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because of his
gout. " So he is clumsy to the bargain," he said to himself.
He presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing
appearance. It was the marquise. Julien thought that her
manner was impertinent, and that she was a little like Madame
de Maugiron, the wife of the sub-prefect of the arrondissement
of Verrieres when she was present at the Saint-Charles dinner.
Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme magnificence of
the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was saying.
The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were
several men there, among whom Julien recognised with an
inexpressible pleasure the young bishop of Agde who had
deigned to speak to him some months before at the ceremony
of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was doubtless frightened
by the tender look which the timidity of Julien fixed on him,
and did not bother to recognise " the provincial."

The men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have
a certain element of gloom and constraint. Conversation
takes place in a low voice in Paris and little details are not
exaggerated.

A handsome young man with moustaches, came in about
half-past six. He was very pale, and had a very small head.

"You always keep us waiting" said the marquise, as he
kissed her hand.

Julien realised that it was the Count de la Mole. From
the very first he thought he was charming.

" Is it possible," he said to himself " that this is the man
whose offensive jests are going to drive me out of the house."

As the result of scrutinising count Norbert, Julien noticed
that he was in boots and spurs. " And I have got to be in
shoes iust like an inferior apparently." They sat down at

250 THE RED AND THE BLACK

table, Julien heard the marquise raising her voice a little and
saying something severe. Almost simultaneously he noticed
an extremely blonde and very well developed young person
who had just sat down opposite him. Nevertheless she made
no appeal to him. Looking at her attentively he thought
that he had never seen such beautiful eyes, although they
betokened a great coldness of soul. Subsequently Julien
thought that, though they looked bored and sceptical, they
were conscious of the duty of being impressive. " Madame
de Renal of course had very fine eyes " he said to himself, " she
used to be universally complimented on them, but they had
nothing in common with these." Julien did not know enough
of society to appreciate that it was the fire of repartee which
from time to time gave their brilliancy to the eyes of
Mademoiselle Mathilde (for that was the name he heard her
called by). When Madame-de Renal's eyes became animated,
it was with the fire of passion, or as the result of a generous
indignation on hearing of some evil deed. Towards the end
of the meal Julien found a word to express Mademoiselle de
la Mole's type of beauty. Her eyes are scintillating, he said to
himself. Apart from her eyes she was cruelly like her mother,
whom he liked less and less, and he ceased looking at her.
By way of compensation he thought Count Norbert admirable
in every respect. Julien was so fascinated that the idea never
occurred to him of being jealous, and hating him because he
was richer and of nobler birth than he was himself.

Julien thought that the marquis looked bored.

About the second course he said to his son : " Norbert, I
ask all your good offices for M. Julien Sorel, whom I have
just taken into my staff and of whom I hope to make a man
si cella se pent."

" He is my secretary," said the marquis to his neighbour,
" and he spells cela with two ll's." Everybody looked at Julien,
who bowed to Norbert in a manner that was slightly too
marked, but speaking generally they were satisfied with his
expression.

The marquis must have spoken about the kind of education
which Julien had received for one of the guests tackled him on
Horace. "It was just by talking about Horace that I
succeeded with the bishop of Besancon," said Julien to
himself. Apparently that is the only author they know.

ENTRY INTO SOCIETY 251

From that instant he was master of himself, This transition
was rendered easy because he had just decided that he would
never look upon Madamoiselle de la Mole as a woman after
his own taste. Since the seminary he had the lowest opinion
of men, and was not to be easily intimidated by them. He
would have enjoyed all his self-possession if the dining-room
had been furnished with less magnificence. It was, as a matter
of fact, two mirrors each eight feet high in which he would
look from time to time at the man who was speaking to him
about Horace, which continued to impress him. His phrases
were not too long for a provincial, he had fine eyes whose
brilliancy was doubled by his quavering timidity, or by his
happy bashfulness when he had given a good answer. They
found him pleasant. This kind of examination gave a little
interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signed to Julien's
questioner to press him sharply. " Can he possibly know
something ? " he thought.

Julien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost
sufficient of his nervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for
that is impossible for any one ignorant of the special language
which is used in Paris, but to show himself possessed of ideas
which, though presented out of place and ungracefully, were
yet original. They saw that he knew Latin perfectly.

Julien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions
who chanced to know Latin. He found Julien a very good
humanist, was not frightened of making him feel uncomfortable,
and really tried to embarrass him. In the heat of the con-
troversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent furniture of
the dining-room. He managed to expound theories con-
cerning the Latin poets which his questioner had never read
of anywhere. Like an honest man, he gave the young
secretary all due credit for them. As luck would have it,
they started a discussion on the question of whether Horace
was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless voluptuary
who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend of
Moliere and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate
who wrote odes for the king's birthday like Southey, the
accuser of Lord Byron. They talked about the state of society
under Augustus and under George IV. At both periods the
aristocracy was all-powerful, but, while at Rome it was despoiled
of its power by Maecenas who was only a simple knight, it had

252 THE RED AND THE BLACK

in England reduced George IV practically to the position of
a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis
out of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged
at the beginning of the dinner.

Julien found meaningless such modern names as Southey,
Lord Byron, and George IV, which he now heard pronounced
for the first time. But every one noticed that whenever the
conversation dealt with events that had taken place in Rome
and about which knowledge could be obtained by a perusal
of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he showed an
indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several
ideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besan^on in the
historic conversation which he had had with that prelate.
These ideas were not the least appreciated.

When every one was tired of talking about poets the
marquise, who always made it a rule to admire whatever
amused her husband, deigned to look at Julien. " Perhaps
an educated man lies hid beneath the clumsy manners of this
young abbe," said the Academician who happened to be near
the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said.
Ready-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the
house quite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and
was very pleased with herself for having invited the academician
to dinner. " He has amused M. de la Mole " she thought.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FIRST STEPS

This immense valley, filled with brilliant lights and so
many thousands of men dazzles my sight. No one
knows me. All are superior to me. I lose my head.
Poemi deW av. RE IN A.

Julien was copying letters in the library very early the next
day when Mademoiselle Mathilde came in by a little dummy
door very well masked by the backs of the books. While
Julien was admiring the device, Mademoiselle Mathilde seemed
astonished and somewhat annoyed at finding him there :
Julien saw that she was in curl- papers and had a hard, haughty,
and masculine expression. Mademoiselle de la Mole had the
habit of surreptitiously stealing books from her father's library.
Julien's presence rendered this morning's journey abortive, a
fact which annoyed her all the more as she had come to fetch
the second volume of Voltaire's Princess of Babylon^ a worthy
climax to one of the most eminently monarchical and religious
educations which the convent of the Sacred Heart had ever
provided. This poor girl of nineteen already required some
element of spiciness in order to get up an interest in a novel.

Count Norbert put in an appearance in the library about
three o'clock. He had come to study a paper so as to be
able to talk politics in the evening, and was very glad to meet
Julien, whose existence he had forgotten. He was charming,
and offered him a ride on horseback.

" My father will excuse us until dinner."

Julien appreciated the us and thought it charming.

" Great heavens ! M. le Comte," said Julien, " if it were a
question of felling an eighty-foot tree or hewing it out and
making it into planks I would acquit myself all right, I

254 THE RED AND THE BLACK

daresay, but as for riding a horse, I haven't done such a thing
six times in my life."

" Well, this will be the seventh," said Norbert.

As a matter of fact, Julien remembered the king of 's

entry into Verrieres, and thought he rode extremely well.
But as they were returning from the Bois de Boulogne he fell
right in the middle of the Rue du Bac, as he suddenly tried to
get out of the way of a cabriolet, and was spattered all over with
mud. It was lucky that he had two suits. The marquis, wishing
to favour him with a few words at dinner, asked him for news
of his excursion. Norbert began immediately to answer him in
general terms.

" M. le Comte is extremely kind to me," answered Julien.
" I thank him for it, and I fully appreciate it. He was good
enough to have the quietest and prettiest horse given to me,
but after all he could not tie me on to it, and owing to the
lack of that precaution, I had a fall right in the middle of that
long street near the bridge. Madame Mathilde made a futile
effort to hide a burst of laughter, and subsequently was
indiscreet enough to ask for details. Julien acquitted himself
with much simplicity. He had grace without knowing it.

u I prophesy favourably about that little priest," said the
marquis to the academician. "Think of a provincial being
simple over a matter like that. Such a thing has never been
witnessed before, and will never be witnessed again; and
what is more, he describes his misfortune before ladies."

Julien put his listeners so thoroughly at their ease over his
misfortune that at the end of the dinner, when the general
conversation had gone off on to another subject, Mademoiselle
Mathilde asked her brother some questions over the details of
the unfortunate occurrence. As she put numerous questions,
and as Julien met her eyes several times, he ventured to
answer himself, although the questions had not been addressed
to him, and all three of them finished up by laughing just as
though they had all been inhabitants of some village in the
depths of a forest.

On the following day Julien attended two theology lectures,
and then came back to copy out about twenty letters. He
found a young man, who though very carefully dressed, had a
mean appearance and an envious expression, established near
him in the library.

THE FIRST STEPS 255

The marquis entered, "What are you doing here, M.
Tanbeau ? " he said severely to the new-comer.

" I thought " answered the young man, with a base smile.

" No, monsieur, you thought nothing of the kind. This is
a try-on, but it is an unfortunate one."

Young Tanbeau got up in a rage and disappeared. He
was a nephew of the academician who was a friend of Madame
de la Mole, and intended to take up the profession of letters.
The academician had induced the marquis to take him as a
secretary. Tanbeau used to work in a separate room, but
having heard of the favour that was vouchsafed to Julien he
wished to share it, and he had gone this morning and
established his desk in the library.

At four o'clock Julien ventured, after a little hesitation, to
present himself to Count Norbert. The latter was on the
point of going riding, and being a man of perfect politeness
felt embarrassed.

" I think," he said to Julien, " that you had better go to the
riding school, and after a few weeks, I shall be charmed to
ride with you."

" I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the
kindness which you have shewn me. Believe me, monsieur,"
added Julien very seriously, " that I appreciate all I owe you.
If your horse has not been hurt by the reason of my clumsiness
of yesterday, and if it is free I should like to ride it this
afternoon."

" Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your
own risk and peril ; kindly assume that I have put forth all
the objections required by prudence. As a matter of fact it is
four o'clock, we have no time to lose."

As soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young
count, "What must one do not to fall off?"

" Lots of things," answered Norbert, bursting into laughter.
" Keep your body back for instance."

Julien put his horse to the trot. They were at the Place
Louis XVI.

" Oh, you foolhardy youngster," said Norbert " there are too
many carriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers
into the bargain. Once you are on the ground their tilburies
will run over your body, they will not risk spoiling their horses'
mouths by pulling up short."

256 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Norbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling,
but in the end the excursion finished without misadventure.
As they came back the young count said to his sister,

" Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil."

When he talked to his father over the dinner from one end
of the table to the other, he did justice to Julien's courage.
It was the only thing one could possibly praise about his style of
riding. The young count had heard in the morning the men
who groomed the horses in the courtyard making Julien's fall
an opportunity for the most outrageous jokes at his expense.

In spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself
completely isolated in this family. All their customs seemed
strange to him, and he was cognizant of none of them. His
blunders were the delight of the valets.

The abbe Pirard had left for his living. " If Julien is a
weak reed, let him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him
get out of his difficulties all alone," he thought.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE

What is he doing here? Will he like it there? Will he try
to please? Ronsard.

If everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la
Mole seemed strange to Julien, that pale young man in his
black suit seemed in his turn very strange to those persons
who deigned to notice him. Madame de la Mole suggested to
her husband that he should send him off on some business on
those days when they had certain persons to dinner.

" I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion,"
answered the marquis. " The abbe Pirard contends that we
are wrong in crushing the self-respect of the people whom we
allow around us. One can only lean on what resists. The
only thing against this man is his unknown face, apart from
that he is a deaf mute."

" If I am to know my way about," said Julien to himself.
" I must write down the names of the persons whom I see come
to the salon together with a few words on their character."

He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the
house who took every opportunity of paying court to him,
believing that he was protected by a whim of the marquis.
They were poor dull devils. But it must be said in praise of
this class of men, such as they are found to-day in the salons
of the aristocracy, that every one did not find them equally
tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied by
the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark
which had been addressed to him by the marquise.

The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to
boredom ; they were too much used to finding their only
distraction in the addressing of insults, to enable them to
expect true friends. But, except on rainy days and in rare

17

258 THE RED AND THE BLACK

moments of savage boredom, they always showed themselves
perfectly polite.

If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an
affection towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole,
the marquise would have been exposed to long spells of solitude,
and in the eyes of women of that class, solitude is awful, it is
the symbol of disgrace.

The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her
salon was sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he
did not think his new colleagues were sufficiently noble to
come to his house as friends, or sufficiently amusing to be
admitted as inferiors.

It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The
governing policy of a household, though it forms the staple
of conversation in bourgeois families, is only alluded to in
families of the class of that of the marquis in moments of
distress. So paramount even in this bored century is the
necessity of amusing ones self, that even on the days of dinner-
parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all the
guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests
about either God or the priests or the king or the persons in
office, or the artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or
of anything that was established, provided that one did not
praise either Beranger or the opposition papers, or Voltaire or
Rousseau or anything which involved any element of free
speech, provided that above all that one never talked politics,
one could discuss everything with freedom.

There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year
and no blue ribbon which could sustain a contest against such
a code of salon etiquette.

The slightest live idea appeared a crudity. In spite of the
prevailing good form, perfect politeness, and desire to please,
ennui was visible in every face. The young people who came
to pay their calls were frightened of speaking of anything which
might make them suspected of thinking or of betraying that
they had read something prohibited, and relapsed into silence
after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and the weather.

Julien noticed that the conversation was usually kept alive
by two viscounts and five barons whom M. de la Mole had
known at the time of the emigration. These gentlemen
enjoyed an income of from six to eight hundred thousand

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE 259

francs. Four swore by the Quotidienne and three by the Gazette
de France. One of them had every day some anecdote to tell
about the Chateau, in which he made lavish use of the word
admirable. Julien noticed that he had five crosses, the others
as a rule only had three.

By way of compensation six footmen in livery were to be
seen in the ante-room, and during the whole evening ices or
tea were served every quarter-of-an-hour, while about midnight
there was a kind of supper with champagne.

This was the reason that sometimes induced Julien to stay
till the end. Apart from this he could scarcely understand
why any one could bring himself to take seriously the ordinary
conversation in this magnificently gilded salon. Sometimes he
would look at the talkers to see if they themselves were not
making fun of what they were saying. " My M. de Maistre,
whom I know by heart," he thought, "has put it a hundred
times better, and all the same he is pretty boring,"

Julien was not the only one to appreciate this stifling moral
atmosphere. Some consoled themselves by taking a great
quantity of ices, others by the pleasure of saying all the rest
of the evening, " I have just come from the Hotel de la Mole
where I learnt that Russia, etc."

Julien learnt from one of the toadies that scarcely six months
ago madame de la Mole had rewarded more than twenty
years of assiduous attention by promoting the poor baron Le
Bourguignon, who had been a sub-prefect since the restoration,
to the rank of prefect.

This great event had whetted the zeal of all these gentlemen.
Previously there were few things to which they would have
objected, now they objected to nothing. There was rarely
any overt lack of consideration, but Julien had already caught
at meals two or three little short dialogues between the
marquis and his wife which were cruel to those who were
seated near them. These noble personages did not conceal
their sincere contempt for everyone who was not sprung from
people who were entitled to ride in the carriages of the king.
Julien noticed that the word crusade was the only word which
gave their face an expression of deep seriousness akin to respect.
Their ordinary respect had always a touch of condescension.
In the middle of this magnificence and this boredom Julien was
interested in nothing except M. de la Mole. He was delighted

260 THE RED AND THE BLACK

to hear him protest one day that he had had nothing to do
with the promotion of that poor Le Bourguignon, it was an
attention to the marquise. Julien knew the truth from the
abbe Pirard.

The abbe was working in the marquis's library with Julien
one morning at the eternal de Frilair lawsuit.

" Monsieur," said Julien suddenly, " is dining every day
with madame la marquise one of my duties or a special
favour that they show to me ?"

" It's a special honour," replied the scandalised abbe. " M.
the Academician, who has been cultivating the family for fifteen
years, has never been able to obtain so much for his M.
Tanbeau."

" I find it, sir, the most painful part of my employment.
I was less bored at the seminary. Some times I see even
mademoiselle de la Mole yawn, and yet she ought to be
accustomed to the social charms of the friends of the house.
I am frightened of falling asleep. As a favour, obtain
permission for me to go and get a forty sous' dinner in some
obscure inn."

The abbe who was a true snob, was very appreciative of the
honour of dining with a great lord. While he was endeavour-
ing to get Julien to understand this point of view a slight noise
made them turn round. Julien saw mademoiselle de la Mole
listening. He reddened. She had come to fetch a book and
had heard everything. She began to entertain some respect
for Julien. " He has not been born servile," she thought,
" like that old abbe. Heavens, how ugly he is."

At dinner Julien did not venture to look at mademoiselle de
la Mole but she was kind enough to speak to him. They
were expecting a lot of visitors that day and she asked him to
stay. The young girls of Paris are not at all fond of persons
of a certain age, especially when they are slovenly. Julien did
not need much penetration to realise that the colleagues of M.
le Bourguignon who remained in the salon had the privilege
of being the ordinary butt of mademoiselle de la Mole's jokes.
On this particular day, whether or not by reason of some
affectation on her part, she proved cruel to bores.

Mademoiselle de la Mole was the centre of a little knot
which used to form nearly every evening behind the marquise's
immense arm-chair. There were to be found there the

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE 261

marquis de Croisenois, the comte de Caylus, the vicomte de
Luz and two or three other young officers, the friends of
Norbert or his sister. These gentlemen used to sit down on a
large blue sofa. At the end of the sofa, opposite the part
where the brilliant Mathilde was sitting, Julien sat in silence
on a little, rather low straw chair. This modest position was
envied by all the toadies ; Norbert kept his father's young
secretary in countenance by speaking to him, or mentioning
him by name once or twice in the evening. On this particular
occasion mademoiselle de la Mole asked him what was the
height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besancon is
planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher
or lower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what
was said in this little knot, but he felt himself incapable of
inventing anything analagous. It was like a strange language
which he understood but could not speak.

On this particular day Matilde's friends manifested a con-
tinuous hostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon.
The friends of the house were the favoured victims at first,
inasmuch as they were better known. You can form your
opinion as to whether Julien paid attention ; everything
interested him, both the substance of things and the manner
of making fun of them.

"And there is M. Descoulis," said Matilde; "he doesn't
wear a wig any more. Does he want to get a prefectship
through sheer force of genius? He is displaying that bald
forehead which he says is filled with lofty thoughts."

" He is a man who knows the whole world," said the
marquis de Croisenois. " He also goes to my uncle the
cardinal's. He is capable of cultivating a falsehood with each
of his friends for years on end, and he has two or three
hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship, that is
his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst
winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by
seven o'clock in the morning.

" He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight
letters for each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he
writes seven or eight letters to express his bursts of friendship.
But he shines most brilliantly in the frank and sincere
expansiveness of the honest man who keeps nothing up his
sleeve. This manoeuvre is brought into play when he has

262 THE RED AND THE BLACK

some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very
good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration.
I will bring him to you."

" Bah ! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy
among the lower classes." said the comte de Caylus.

" M. Descoulis will live in history," replied the marquis.
" He brought about the restoration together with the abbe de
Pradt and messieurs de Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo."

"That man has handled millions," said Norbert, "and I
can't conceive why he should come here to swallow my
father's epigrams which are frequently atrocious. ' How many
times have you betrayed your friends, my dear Descoulis?'
he shouted at him one day from one end of the table to the
other."

"But is it true that he has played the traitor?" asked
mademoiselle de la Mole. " Who has not played the
traitor ? "

" Why ! " said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, " do you
have that celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house.
What the devil's he come here for ? I must go up to him and
speak to him and make him speak. He is said to be so
clever."

" But how will your mother receive him ? " said M. de
Croisenois. " He has such extravagant, generous and in-
dependent ideas."

"Look," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "look at the in-
dependent man who bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis
while he grabs hold of his hand. I almost thought he was
going to put it to his lips."

" Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than
we thought," answered M. de Croisenois.

"Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy,"

said Norbert. " See how he bows to the baron L ,

Croisenois."

" It would be less base to kneel down," replied M. de Luz.

" My dear Sorel," said Norbert, " you are extremely smart,
but you come from the mountains. Mind you never bow like
that great poet is doing, even to God the Father."

"Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Baton," said
mademoiselle de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the
flunkey who had just announced him.

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE 263

" I think that even your servants make fun of him. What
a name Baron Baton," said M. de Caylus.

" What's in a name ? " he said to us the other day, went on
Matilde. " Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for
the first time. So far as I am concerned the public only need
to get used to me."

" Julien left the vicinity of the sofa."

Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of
a delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest
ought to have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in
these young peoples' conversation except a vein of universal
scandal-mongering and was shocked by it. His provincial
or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, though
in this he was certainly mistaken.

"Count Norbert," he said to himself, "who has had to
make three drafts for a twenty-line letter to his colonel would
be only too glad to have written once in his whole life one
page as good as M. Sainclair."

Julien approached successively the several groups and
attracted no attention by reason of his lack of importance.
He followed the Baron Baton from a distance and tried to
hear him.

This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see
him recover his equanimity before he had hit upon three or
four stinging phrases. Julien thought that this kind of wit
had great need of space.

The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least
four sentences of six lines each, in order to be brilliant.

"That man argues, he does not talk," said someone behind
Julien. He turned round and reddened with pleasure when
he heard the name of the comte Chalvet. He was the subtlest
man of the century. Julien had often found his name in the
Memorial of St. Helena and in the portions of history dictated
by Napoleon. The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic,
his phrases were flashes of lightning just, vivid, deep. If he
talked about any matter the conversation immediately made
a step forward ; he imported facts into it ; it was a pleasure to
hear him. In politics, however, he was a brazen cynic.

" I am independent, I am," he was saying to a gentleman
with three stars, of whom apparently he was making fun.
"Why insist on my having to-day the same opinion I had

264 THE RED AND THE BLACK

six weeks ago. In that case my opinion would be my
master."

Four grave young men who were standing round scowled ;
these gentlemen did not like flippancy. The comte saw that
he had gone too far. Luckily he perceived the honest M.
Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty. The count began
to talk to him ; people closed up, for they realised that poor
Balland was going to be the next victim.

M. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first
steps in the world were almost unmentionable, had by dint
of his morals and his morality married a very rich wife
who had died ; he subsequently married a second very rich
one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in all
humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his
own flatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about
all this. There was soon a circle of thirty persons around
them. Everybody was smiling, including the solemn young
men who were the hope of the century.

" Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is
obviously only a laughing stock?" thought Julien. He
approached the abbe Pirard to ask him.

M. Balland made his escape.

" Good," said Norbert, " there is one of the spies of my
father gone ; there is only the little limping Napier left."

" Can that be the key of the riddle ? " thought Julien, " but
if so, why does the marquis receive M. Balland ? "

The stern abbe Pirard was scowling in a corner of the
salon listening to the lackeys announcing the names.

" This is nothing more than a den," he was saying like
another Basil, " I see none but shady people come in."

As a matter of fact the severe abbe did not know what
constitutes high society. But his friends the Jansenites, had
given him some very precise notions about those men who only
get into society by reason of their extreme subtlety in the service
of all parties, or of their monstrous wealth. For some
minutes that evening he answered Julien's eager questions
fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short grieved at
having always to say ill of every one, and thinking he was
guilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as
he did in the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual
conflict.

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE 265

" How strange that abbe Pirard looks," said mademoiselle
de la Mole, as Julien came near the sofa.

Julien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M.
Pirard was unquestionably the most honest man in the salon,
but his pimply face, which was suffering from the stings of
conscience, made him look hideous at this particular moment.
" Trust physiognomy after this," thought Julien, " it is only
when the delicate conscience of the abbe Pirard is reproaching
him for some trifling lapse that he looks so awful ; while the
expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure and
tranquil happiness." The abbe Pirard, however, had made
great concessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and
was very well dressed.

Julien noticed something strange in the salon, it was that
all eyes were being turned towards the door, and there was
a semi silence. The flunkey was announcing the famous
Barron Tolly, who had just become publicly conspicuous by
reason of the elections. Julien came forward and had a very
good view of him. The baron had been the president of an
electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away the
little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the
parties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal
number of other little pieces of paper containing a name
agreeable to himself. This drastic manoeuvre had been
noticed by some of the voters, who had made an immediate
point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good fellow
was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had
pronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him
coldly. The poor Baron made his escape.

" If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comte's," ' said
Comte Chalvet and everyone laughed.

Little Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to
some silent noblemen and some intriguers who, though shady,
were all men of wit, and were on this particular night in great
force in M. de la Mole's salon (for he was mentioned for a
place in the ministry). If he had not yet any subtlety of
perception he made up for it as one will see by the energy of
his words.

" Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment,"

celebrated conjuror.

266 THE RED AND THE BLACK

he was saying at the moment when Julien approached his
knot. Those reptiles should be confined in the bottom of a
dungeon, they ought to languish to death in gaol, otherwise
their venom will grow and become more dangerous. What is
the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns ?
He is poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for
him. What the case required was a five hundred francs fine
and ten years in a dungeon."

" Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking
about ? " thought Julien who was viewing with amazement the
vehement tone and hysterical gestures of his colleague. At
this moment the thin, drawn, little face of the academician's
nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they were
talking of the greatest poet of the century.

" You monster," Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears
of generosity moistened his eyes. " You little rascal," he
thought, " I will pay you out for this."

" Yet," he thought, " those are the unborn hopes of the
party of which the marquis is one of the chiefs. How many
crosses and how many sinecures would that celebrated man
whom he is now defaming have accumulated if he had sold
himself I won't say to the mediocre ministry of M. de
Nerval but to one of those reasonably honest ministries
which we have seen follow each other in succession."

The abbe Pirard motioned to Julien from some distance
off; M. de la Mole had just said something to him. But
when Julien, who was listening at the moment with downcast
eyes to the lamentations of the bishop, had at length got free
and was able to get near his friend, he found him monopolised
by the abominable little Tanbeau. The little beast hated
him as the cause of Julien's favour with the marquis, and
was now making up to him.

" When will death deliver us from that aged rottenness"
it was in these words of a biblical energy that the little man of
letters was now talking of the venerable Lord Holland. His
merit consisted in an excellent knowledge of the biography of
living men, and he had just made a rapid review of all the
men who could aspire to some influence under the reign of
the new King of England.

The abbe Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien
followed him.

THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE 267

" I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his
only prejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage
it, the history of the Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour
and protect you as a learned man. But don't write a page of
French, especially on serious matters which are above your
position in society, or he will call you a scribbler and take
you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you do in the
hotel of a great lord you don't know the Duke de Castries'
epigram on Alembert and Rousseau : ' the fellow wants to
reason about everything and hasn't got an income of a
thousand crowns ' ! "

"Everything leaks out here," thought Julien, "just like
the seminary." He had written eight or six fairly drastic
pages. It was a kind of historical eulogy of the old surgeon-
major who had, he said, made a man of him. " The little note
book," said Julien to himself, "has always been locked." He
went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned to
the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men
with the stars were left.

Seven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very
affected, and of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were
grouped round the table that the servants had just brought in
ready served. The brilliant marechale de Fervaques came in
apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was more than
midnight : she went and sat down near the marquise. Julien
was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the expression of
madame de Renal.

Mademoiselle de la Mole's circle was still full of people.
She was engaged with her friends in making fun of the
unfortunate comte de Thaler. He was the only son of that
celebrated Jew who was famous for the riches that he had
won by lending money to kings to make war on the peoples.

The Jew had just died leaving his son an income of one
hundred thousand crowns a month, and a name that was only
too well known. This strange position required either a
simple character or force of will power.

Unfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was
inflated by all kinds of pretensions which had been suggested
to him by all his toadies.

M. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make
up his mind to ask for the hand of mademoiselle de la Mole,

268 THE RED AND THE BLACK

to whom the marquis de Croisenois, who would be a duke
with a hundred thousand francs a year, was paying his
attentions.

" Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind," said Norbert
pitifully.

Will-power was what the poor comte de Thaler lacked most
of all. So far as this side of his character went he was worthy
of being a king. He would take council from everybody, but
he never had the courage to follow any advice to the bitter
end.

"His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself," mademoiselle
de la Mole was fond of saying, " to have inspired her with a
holy joy." It was a singular mixture of anxiety and disappoint-
ment, but from time to time one could distinguish gusts of
self-importance, and above all that trenchant tone suited to the
richest man in France, especially when he had nothing to be
ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet thirty-
six. " He is timidly insolent," M. de Croisenois would say.
The comte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachoed
young people made fun of him to their heart's content without
him suspecting it, and finally packed him off as one o'clock
struck.

" Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the
door in this awful weather ? " said Norbert to him.

" No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper," said M. de
Thaler. " The horse on the left cost me five thousand francs,
while the one on the right is only worth one hundred louis, but
I would ask you to believe me when I say that I only have
him out at night. His trot you see is exactly like the other
ones."

Norbert's remark made the comte think it was good form
for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he
must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other
gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the
time. " So," thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the
staircase, " I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of
my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I
found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an
hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that
cures one of envy."

CHAPTER XXXV

SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY

An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity,
so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe
to him who introduces new ideas into his conversation !

Faublas.

This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several
months of probation the steward of the household handed him
the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted
him with the adminisiration of his estates in Brittany and
Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had
chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous
law-suit with the abbe" de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed
him.

On the data of the short notes which the marquis would
scribble on the margin of all the various paper which were
addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were
nearly all signed.

At the Theology School his professors complained of his
lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of
their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as
it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed
Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the
provinces. His pallor consiituted one of his merits in the
eyes of his comrades, the young seminarist; he found them
much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver
crown than those of Besangon ; they thought he was con-
sumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on
horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed
by the doctors. The abbe Pirard had taken him into several

2 7 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

Jansenist Societies. Julien was astonished; the idea of re-
ligion was indissolubly connected in his mind with the ideas of
hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those austere pious
men who never gave a thought to their income. Several
Jansensists became friendly with him and would give him
advice. A new world opened before him. At the Jansenists
he got to know a comte Altamira, who was nearly six feet
high, was a Liberal, a believer, and had been condemned to
death in his own country. He was struck by the strange con-
trast of devoutness and love of liberty.

Julien's relations with the young comte had become cool.
Norbert had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends
with too much sharpness. Julien had committed one or two
breaches of social etiquette and vowed to himself that he
would never speak to mademoiselle Mathilde. They were
always perfectly polite to him in the hotel de la Mole but he
felt himself quite lost. His provincial commonsense explained
this result by the vulgar proverb Tout beau tout nouveau.

He gradually came to have a little more penetration than
during his first days, or it may have been that the first glamour
of Parisian urbanity had passed of. As soon as he left off
working, he fell a prey to a mortal boredom. He was ex-
periencing the withering effects of that admirable politeness so
typical of good society, which is so perfectly modulated to
every degree of the social hierarchy.

No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a common-
ness and lack of polish in their tone ; but they show a certain
amount of passion, when they answer you. Julien's self-
respect was never wounded at the hotel de la Mole, but he
often felt at the end of the day as though he would like to cry.
A cafe-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in you if
you happen to have some accident as you enter his cafe, but
if this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable
to your vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very
word which tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At
Paris they make a point of laughing in secret, but you always
remain a stranger.

We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which
would have made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some
extent above ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his
committing innumerable acts of bad taste. All his pleasures

SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY 271

were precautions ; he practiced pistol shooting every day, he
was one of the promising pupils of the most famous maitres
d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself, instead of
employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush off to
the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he
went out with the master of the riding school he was almost
invariably thrown.

The marquis found him convenient by reason of his per-
sistent industry, his silence and his intelligence, and gradually
took him into his confidence with regard to all his affairs,
which were in any way difficult to unravel. The marquis was a
sagacious business man on all those occasious when his lofty
ambition gave him some respite ; having special information
within his reach, he would speculate successfully on the
Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he
would easily lose his temper. He would give away hundreds
of louis, and would go to law for a few hundred francs. Rich
men with a lofty spirit have recourse to business not so
much for results as for distraction. The marquis needed a
chief of staff who would put all his money affairs into clear
and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a
character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have
a horror of those unexpected incidents which are produced by
a sensitive character; they constitute the opposite pole of
etiquette. On two or three occasions the marquis took his
part. " If he is ridiculous in your salon, he triumphs in his
office." Julien on his side thought he had caught the
marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in
everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced.
He was a cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy.
He was tall, thin, ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in
his chateau, and generally speaking said nothing about any-
thing. Such was his outlook on life. Madame de la Mole
would have been happy for the first time in her life if she could
have made him her daughter's husband.

CHAPTER XXXVI

PRONUNCIATION

If fatuity is pardonable it is in one's first youth, for it is then
the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It needs an air of love,
gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity coupled with self-importance ;
fatuity with a solemn and self-sufficient manner ! This ex-
travagance of stupidity was reserved for the XlXth century.
Such are the persons who want to unchain the hydra of
revolutions ! LE JOHANNISBURG, Pamphlet.

Considering that he was a new arrival who was too dis-
dainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly
great mistakes. One day when he was forced into a cafe in
the Rue St. Honore by a sudden shower, a big man in a
beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in
return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before
at Besancon.

Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured
the other insult to put up with this stare. He asked for an
explanation. The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed
him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people
in the cafe surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before
the door. Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter
of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his
pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined him-
self to repeating to his man " Monsieur, your address, I despise
you."

The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words
eventually impressed the crowd.

" By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to
give him his address," they exclaimed. The man in the tail-
coat hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards
in Julien's face.

PRONUNCIATION 273

Fortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had
mentally resolved not to use his pistols except in the event
of his being hit. The man went away, though not without
turning round from time to time to shake his fist and hurl
insults at him.

Julien was bathed in sweat. " So," he said angrily to him-
self, " the meanest of mankind has it in his power to affect
me as much as this. How am I to kill so humiliating a
sensitiveness ? "

Where was he to find a second ? He did not have a single
friend. He had several acquaintances, but they all regularly
left him after six weeks of social intercourse. " I am un-
sociable," he thought, and "lam now cruelly punished for it."
Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old lieutenant of the
96th, named Lieven, a poor devil with whom he often used to
fence. Julien was frank with him.

11 1 am quite willing to be your second," said Lieven, " but
on one condition. If you fail to wound your man you will
fight with me straight away."

"Agreed," said Julien quite delighted; and they went to
find M. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at
the end of the Faubourg Saint Germain.

It was seven o'clock in the morning. It was only when he
was being ushered in, that Julien thought that it might quite
well be the young relation of Madame de Renal, who had
once been employed at the Rome or Naples Embassy, and
who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of introduction.

Julien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the
previous evening together with one of his own to a tall valet.

He and his second were kept waiting for a good three-
quarters of an hour. Eventually they were ushered in to a
elegantly furnished apartment. They found there a tall
young man who was dressed like a doll. His features pre-
sented the perfection and the lack of expression of Greek
beauty. His head, which was remarkably straight, had the
finest blonde hair. It was dressed with great care and not a
single hair was out of place.

" It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this
damned fop has kept us waiting," thought the lieutenant of
the 96th. The variegated dressing gown, the morning trousers,
everything down to the embroidered slippers was correct. He

18

274 THE RED AND THE BLACK

was marvellously well-groomed. His blank and aristocratic
physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox ideas ; the ideal
of a Mettemichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did not like
to have in his entourage officers who thought.

Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained,
that keeping him waiting was an additional insult after having
thrown his card so rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de
Beauvoisis' room. He intended to be insolent, but at the same
time to exhibit good form.

Julien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis'
manners and by the combination of formality, self-importance,
and self-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable
elegance of everything that surrounded him, that he abandoned
immediately all idea of being insolent. It was not his man
of the day before. His astonishment was so great at meeting
so distinguished a person, instead of the rude creature
whom he was looking for, that he could not find a single word
to say. He presented one of the cards which had been thrown
at him.

"That's my name," said the young diplomat, not at all
impressed by Julien's black suit at seven o'clock in the
morning, " but I do not understand the honour."

His manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little
of Julien's bad temper.

"I have come to fight you, monsieur," and he explained in
a few words the whole matter.

M. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly
satisfied with the cut of Julien's black suit.

" It comes from Staub, that's clear," he said to himself, as
he heard him speak. " That waistcoat is in good taste.
Those boots are all right, but on the other hand just think of
wearing a black suit in the early morning ! It must be to have
a better chance of not being hit," said the chevalier de
Beauvoisis to himself.

After he had given himself this explanation he became
again perfectly polite to Julien, and almost treated him as an
equal. The conversation was fairly lengthy, for the matter
was a delicate one, but eventually Julien could not refuse to
acknowledge the actual facts. The perfectly mannered young
man before him did not bear any resemblance to the vulgar
fellow who had insulted him the previous day

PRONUNCIATION 275

Julien felt an invincible repugnance towards him. He
noted the self-sufficiency of the chevalier de Beauvoisis, for
that was the name by which he had referred to himself,
shocked as he was when Julien called him simply " Monsieur."

He admired his gravity which, though tinged with a certain
modest fatuity, he never abandoned for a single moment. He
was astonished at his singular manner of moving his tongue as
he pronounced his words, but after all, this did not present
the slightest excuse for picking a quarrel.

The young diplomatist very graciously offered to fight, but
the ex-lieutenant of the 96th, who had been sitting down for
an hour with his legs wide apart, his hands on his thigh, and
his elbows stuck out, decided that his friend, monsieur de
Sorel, was not the kind Jto go and pick a quarrel with a
man because someone else had stolen that man's visiting
cards.

Julien went out in a very bad temper. The chevalier de
Beauvoisis' carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard before
the steps. By chance Julien raised his eyes and recognised
in the coachman his man of the day before.

Seeing him, catching hold of him by his big jacket, tumbling
him down from his seat, and horse-whipping him thoroughly
took scarcely a moment.

Two lackeys tried to defend their comrade. Julien received
some blows from their fists. At the same moment, he cocked
one of his little pistols and fired on them. They took to
flight. All this took about a minute.

The chevalier de Beauvoisis descended the staircase with
the most pleasing gravity, repeating with his lordly pro-
nunciation, " What is this, what is this." He was manifestly
very curious, but his diplomatic importance would not allow
him to evince any greater interest.

When he knew what it was all about, a certain haughtiness
tried to assert itself in that expression of slightly playful
nonchalance which should never leave a diplomatist's face.

The lieutenant of the 96th began to realise that M. de
Beauvoisis was anxious to fight. He was also diplomatic
enough to wish to reserve for his friend the advantage of
taking the initiative.

" This time," he exclaimed, " there is ground for duel."

I think there's enough," answered the diplomat

276 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" Turn that rascal out," he said to his lackeys. " Let
someone else get up."

The door of the carriage was open. The chevalier insisted
on doing the honours to Julien and his friend. They sent for
a friend of M. de Beauvoisis, who chose them a quiet place.
The conversation on their way went as a matter of fact very
well indeed. The only extraordinary feature was the diplomatist
in a dressing-gown.

" These gentlemen, although very noble, are by no means
as boring," thought Julien, " as the people who come and
dine at M. de la Mole's, and I can see why," he added a moment
afterwards. " They allow themselves to be indecent." They
talked about the dancers that the public had distinguished
with its favour at the ballet presented the night before. The
two gentlemen alluded to some spicy anecdotes of which
Julien and his second, the lieutenant of the 96th, were
absolutely ignorant.

Julien was not stupid enough to pretend to know them.
He confessed his ignorance with a good grace. This frank-
ness pleased the chevalier's friend. He told him these
stories with the greatest detail and extremely well.

One thing astonished Julien inordinately. The carriage
was pulled up for a moment by an altar which was being built
in the middle of the street for the procession of Corpus Christi
Day. The two gentlemen indulged in the luxury of several
jests. According to them, the cure was the son of an arch-
bishop. Such a joke would never have been heard in the house
of M. de la Mole, who was trying to be made a duke. The duel
was over in a minute. Julien got a ball in his arm. They
bandaged it with handkerchiefs which they wetted with
brandy, and the chevalier de Beauvoisis requested Julien with
great politeness to allow him to take him home in the same
carriage that had brought him. When Julien gave the name
of M. de la Mole's hotel, the young diplomat and his friend
exchanged looks. Julien's fiacre was here, but they found
these gentlemen's conversation more entertaining than that of
the good lieutenant of the 96th.

" By Jove, so a duel is only that," thought Julien. " What
luck I found that coachman again. How unhappy I should
have been if I had had to put up with that insult as well."
Thesin amug conversation had scarcely been interrupted.

PRONUNCIATION 277

Julien realised that the affectation of diplomatists is good for
something.

" So ennui," he said himself, " is not a necessary incident of
conversation among well-born people. These gentlemen make
fun of the Corpus Christi procession and dare to tell extremely
obscene anecdotes, and what is more, with picturesque details.
The only thing they really lack is the ability to discuss politics
logically, and that lack is more than compensated by their
graceful tone, and the perfect aptness of their expressions."
Julien experienced a lively inclination for them. " How happy
I should be to see them often."

They had scarcely taken leave of each other before the
chevalier de Beauvoisis had enquiries made. They were not
brilliant.

He was very curious to know his man. Could he decently
pay a call on him ? The little information he had succeeded
in obtaining from him was not of an encouraging character.

" Oh, this is awful," he said to his second. " I can't
possibly own up to having fought a duel with a mere secretary
of M. de la Mole, simply because my coachman stole my
visiting cards."

"There is no doubt that all this may make you look
ridiculous."

That very evening the chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend
said everywhere that this M. Sorel who was, moreover, quite
a charming young man, was a natural son of an intimate friend
of the marquis de la Mole. This statement was readily
accepted. Once it was established, the young diplomatist
and friend deigned to call several times on Julien during the
fortnight. Julien owned to them that he had only been to the
Opera once in his life. " That is awful," said one, " that is
the only place one does go to. Your first visit must be when
they are playing the ' Comte Ory.' "

The chevalier de Beauvoisis introduced him at the opera
to the famous singer Geronimo, who was then enjoying an
immense success.

Julien almost paid court to the chevalier. His mixture of
self-respect, mysterious self-importance, and fatuous youthful-
ness fascinated him. The chevalier, for example, would
stammer a little, simply because he had the honour of seeing
frequently a very noble lord who had this defect. Julien had

278 THE RED AND THE BLACK

never before found combined in one and the same person the
drollery which amuses, and those perfect manners which
should be the object of a poor provincial's imitation.

He was seen at the opera with the chevalier de Beauvoisis.
This association got him talked about.

" Well," said M. de la Mole to him one day, " so here you
are, the narural son of a rich gentleman of Franche Comte, an
intimate friend of mine."

The marquis cut Julien short as he started to protest that
he had not in any way contributed to obtaining any credence
for this rumour.

" M. de Beauvoisis did not fancy having fought a duel with
the son of a carpenter."

" I know it, I know it," said M. de la Mole. " It is my
business now to give some consistency to this story which
rather suits me. But I have one favour to ask of you, which
will only cost you a bare half-hour of your time. Go and
watch every opera day at half-past eleven all the people in
society coming out in the vestibule. I still see you have
certain provincial mannerisms. You must rid yourself of
them. Besides it would do no harm to know, at any rate by
sight, some of the great personages to whom I may one day
send you on a commission. Call in at the box office to get
identified. Admission has been secured for you."

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN ATTACK OF GOUT

And I got advancement, not on my merit, but because my
master had the gout. Bertolotti.

The reader is perhaps surprised by this free and almos
friendly tone. We had forgotten to say that the marquis had
been confined to his house for six weeks by the gout.

Mademoiselle de la Mole and her mother were at Hyeres
near the marquise's mother. The comte Norbert only saw his
father at stray moments. They got on very well, but had
nothing to say to each other. M. de la Mole, reduced to
Julien's society, was astonished to find that he possessed ideas.
He made him read the papers to him. Soon the young
secretary was competent to pick out the interesting passages.
There was a new paper which the marquis abhorred. He
had sworn never to read it, and spoke about it every day.
Julien laughed. In his irritation against the present time, the
marquis made him read Livy aloud. The improvised
translation of the Latin text amused him. The marquis said
one day in that tone of excessive politeness which frequently
tried Julien's patience,

" Allow me to present you with a blue suit, my dear Sorel.
When you find it convenient to wear it and to come and see
me, I shall look upon you as the younger brother of the
comte de Chaulnes, that is to say, the son of my friend the
old Duke."

Julien did not quite gather what it was all about, but he
tried a visit in the blue suit that very evening. The marquis
treated him like an equal. Julien had a spirit capable of
appreciating true politeness, but he had no idea of nuances.
Before this freak of the marquis's he would have sworn that it

z8o THE RED AND THE BLACK

was impossibls for him to have been treated with more
consideration. " What an admirable talent," said Julien to
himself. When he got up to go, the marquis apologised for
not being able to accompany him by reason ot his gout.

Julien was preoccupied by this strange idea. " Perhaps he
is making fun of me," he thought. He went to ask advice of
the abbe Pirard, who being less polite than the marquis, made
no other answer except to whistle and change the subject.

Julien presented himself to the marquis the next morning
in his black suit, with his letter case and his letters for
signature. He was received in the old way, but when he
wore the blue suir that evening, the marquis's tone was quite
different, and absolutely as polite as on the previous day.

"As you are not exactly bored," said the marquis to him,
" by these visits whicn you are kind enough to pay to a poor
old man, you must tell him about all the little incidents of
your life, but you must be frank and think of nothing except
narrating them clearly and in an amusing way. For one
must amuse oneself," continued the marquis. " That's the
only reality in life. I can't have my life saved in a battle
every day, or get a present of a million francs every day, but if
I had Rivarol here by my sofa he would rid me every day of
an hour of suffering and boredom. I saw a lot of him at
Hamburg during the emigration."

And the marquis told Julien the stories of Rivarol and the
inhabitants of Hamburg who needed the combined efforts of
four individuals to understand an epigram. M. de la Mole,
being reduced to the society of this little abbe, tried to teach
him. He put Julien's pride on its mettle. As he was asked
to speak the truth, Julien resolved to tell everything, but to
suppress two things, his fanatical admiration for the name
which irritated the marquis, and that complete scepticism,
which was not particularly appropriate to a prospective cure.
His little affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came in very
handy. The marquis laughed till the tears came into his
eyes at the scene in the cafe in the Rue St. Honore with the
coachman who had loaded him with sordid insults. The
occasion was marked by a complete frankness between the
marquis and the protege.

M. de la Mole became interested in this singular character.
At the beginning he had encouraged Jullikn's droll blunders

AN ATTACK OF GOUT 281

in order to enjoy laughing at them. Soon he found it more
interesting to correct very gently this young man's false
outlook on life.

" All other provincials who come to Paris admire everything,"
thought the marquis. "This one hates everything. They
have too much affectation ; he has not affectation enough ; and
fools take him for a fool."

The attack of gout was protracted by the great winter cold
and lasted some months.

" One gets quite attached to a fine spaniel," thought the
marquis. " Why should I be so ashamed of being attached to
this little abbe ? He is original. I treat him as a son. Well,
where's the bother? The whim, if it lasts, will cost me a
diamond and five hundred louis in my will." Once the
marquis had realised his protege's strength of character, he
entrusted him with some new business every day.

Julien noticed with alarm that this great lord would often
give him inconsistent orders with regard to the same matter.

That might compromise him seriously. Julien now made
a point whenever he worked with him, of bringing a register
with him in which he wrote his instructions which the
marquis initialled. Julien had now a clerk who would
transcribe the instructions relating to each matter in a separate
book. This book also contained a copy of all the letters.

This idea seemed at first absolutely boring and ridiculous,
but in two months the marquis appreciated its advantages.
Julien suggested to him that he should take a clerk out of a
banker's who was to keep proper book-keeping accounts of all
the receipts and of all the expenses of the estates which Julien
had been charged to administer.

These measures so enlightened the marquis as to his own
affairs that he could indulge the pleasure of undertaking two
or three speculations without the help of his nominee who
always robbed him.

" Take three thousand francs for yourself," he said one day
to his young steward.

" Monsieur, I should lay myself open to calumny."

" What do you want then ? " retorted the marquis irritably.

" Perhaps you will be kind enough to make out a statement
of account and enter it in your own hand in the book. That
order will give me a sum of 3,000 francs. Besides it's M. the

282 THE BLACK AND THE RED

abbe Pirard who had the idea of all this exactness in
accounts." The marquis wrote out his instructions in the
register with the bored air of the Marquis de Moncade listen-
ing to the accounts of his steward M. Poisson.

Business was never talked when Julien appeared in the
evening in his blue suit. The kindness of the marquis was so
flattering to the self-respect of our hero, which was always
morbidly sensitive, that in spite of himself, he soon came to
feel a kind of attachment for this nice old man. It is not
that Julien was a man of sensibility as the phrase is understood
at Paris, but he was not a monster, and no one since the
death of the old major had talked to him with so much kind-
ness. He observed that the marquis showed a politeness and
consideration for his own personal feelings which he had never
found in the old surgeon. He now realised that the surgeon
was much prouder of his cross than was the marquis of his
blue ribbon. The marquis's father had been a great lord.

One day, at the end of a morning audience for the transac-
tion of business, when the black suit was worn, Julien
happened to amuse the marquis who kept him for a couple of
hours, and insisted on giving him some banknotes which his
nominee had just brought from the house.

" I hope M. le Marquis, that I am not deviating from the
profound respect which I owe you, if I beg you to allow me
to say a word."

" Speak, my friend."

" M. ie Marquis will deign to allow me to refuse this gift.
It is not meant for the man in the black suit, and it would
completely spoil those manners which you have kindly put up
with in the man in the blue suit." He saluted with much
respect and went out without looking at his employer.

This incident amused the marquis. He told it in the
evening to the abbe Pirard.

" I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbe. I know
Julien's birth, and I authorise you not to regard this confidence
as a secret."

His conduct this morning is noble, thought the marquis, so
I will ennoble him myself.

Some time afterwards the marquis was able to go out.

" Go and pass a couple of months at London," he said to
Julien. "Ordinary and special couriers will bring you the

AN ATTACK OF GOUT 283

letters I have received, together with my notes. You will
write out the answers and send them back to me, putting each
letter inside the answer. I have ascertained that the delay
will be no more than five days."

As he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was
astonished at the triviality of the alleged business on which he
had been sent.

We will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost
horror with which he touched English soil. His mad passion
for Bonaparte is already known. He saw in every officer a Sir
Hudson Low, in every great noble a Lord Bathurst, ordering
the infamies of St. Helena and being recompensed by six
years of office.

At London he really got to know the meaning of sublime
fatuity. He had struck up a friendship with some young
Russian nobles who initiated him.

" Your future is assured, my dear Sorel," they said to him.
" You naturally have that cold demeanour, a thousand leagues
away from the sensation one has at the moment > that we have
been making such efforts to acquire."

" You have not understood your century," said the Prince
Korasoff to him. " Always do the opposite of what is expected
of you. On my honour there you have the sole religion of
the period. Don't be foolish or affected, for then follies and
affectations will be expected of you, and the maxim will not
longer prove true."

Julien covered himself with glory one day in the Salon of
the Duke of Fitz-Folke who had invited him to dinner
together with the Prince Korasoff. They waited for an hour.
The way in which Julien conducted himself in the middle of
twenty people who were waiting is still quoted as a precedent
among the young secretaries of the London Embassy. His
demeanour was unimpeachable.

In spite of his friends, the dandies, he made a point of
seeing the celebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that
England has had since Locke. He found him finishing his
seventh year in prison. The aristocracy doesn't joke in
this country, thought Julien. Moreover Vane is disgraced,
calumniated, etc.

Julien found him in cheery spirits. The rage of the
aristocracy prevented him from being bored. "There's the

284 THE RED AND THE BLACK

only merry man I've seen in England," thought Julien to
himself, as he left the prison.

"The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of
God," Vane had said to him.

We suppress the rest of the system as being cynical.

" What amusing notion do you bring me from England ? "
said M. la Mole to him on his return. He was silent.
" What notion do you bring me, amusing or otherwise ? "
repeated the marquis sharply.

" In the first place," said Julien, " The sanest Englishman
is mad one hour every day. He is visited by the Demon of
Suicide who is the local God.

" In the second place, intellect and genius lose twenty-five
per cent, of their value when they disembark in England.

" In the third place, nothing in the world is so beautiful, so
admirable, so touching, as the English landscapes."

11 Now it is my turn," said the marquis.

" In the first place, why do you go and say at the ball at
the Russian Ambassador's that there were three hundred
thousand young men of twenty in France who passionately
desire war ? Do you think that is nice for the kings ? "

" One doesn't know what to do when talking to great
diplomats," said Julien. "They have a mania for starting
serious discussions. If one confines oneself to the common-
places of the papers, one is taken for a fool. If one indulges
in some original truth, they are astonished and at a loss for an
answer, and get you informed by the first Secretary of the
Embassy at seven o'clock next day that your conduct has been
unbecoming."

"Not bad," said the marquis laughing. "Anyway I will
wager Monsieur Deep-one that you have not guessed what you
went to do in England."

" Pardon me," answered Julien. " I went there to dine once
a week with the king's ambassador, who is the most polite of
men."

"You went to fetch this cross you see here," said the
marquis to him. " I do not want to make you leave off your
black suit, and I have got accustomed to the more amusing
tone I have assumed with the man who wears the blue suit.
So understand this until further orders. When I see this cross,
you will be my friend, the Duke of Chaulne's younger son,

AN ATTACK OF GOUT 285

who has been employed in the diplomatic service the last six
months without having any idea of it. Observe," added the
marquis very seriously, cutting short all manifestations of
thanks, " that I do not want you to forget your place. That
is always a mistake and a misfortune both for patron and for
dependent. When my lawsuits bore you, or when you no
longer suit me, I will ask a good living like that of our good
friend the abbe Pirard's for you, and nothing more," added
the marquis dryly. This put Julien's pride at its ease. He
talked much more. He did not so frequently think himself
insulted and aimed at by those phrases which are susceptible
of some interpretation which is scarcely polite, and which
anybody may give utterance to in the course of an animated
conversation.

This cross earned him a singular visit. It was that of the
baron de Valenod, who came to Paris to thank the Minister
for his barony, and arrive at an understanding with him. He
was going to be nominated mayor of Verrieres, and to
supersede M. de Renal.

Julien did not fail to smile to himself when M. Valenod
gave him to understand that they had just found out that M.
de Renal was a Jacobin. The fact was that the new baron
was the ministerial candidate at the election for which they
were all getting ready, and that it was M. de Renal who was
the Liberal candidate at the great electoral college of the
department, which was, in fact, very ultra.

It was in vain that Julien tried to learn something about
madame de Renal. The baron seemed to remember their
former rivalry, and was impenetrable. He concluded by
canvassing Julien for his father's vote at the election which
was going to take place. Julien promised to write.

"You ought, monsieur le Chevalier, to present me to M.
the marquis de la Mole."

" I ought, as a matter of fact," thought Julien. " But a
rascal like that ! "

" As a matter of fact," he answered, " I am too small a
personage in the hotel de la Mole to take it upon myself to
introduce anyone." Julien told the marquis everything. In
the evening he described Valenod's pretensions, as well as his
deeds and feats since 18 14.

" Not only will you present the new baron to me," replied

286 THE RED AND THE BLACK

de la Mole, very seriously, "but I will invite him to dinner
for the day after to-morrow. He will be one of our new
prefects."

" If that is the case, I ask for my father the post of director
of the workhouse," answered Julian, coldly.

" With pleasure," answered the marquis gaily. " It shall
be granted. I was expecting a lecture. You are getting on."

M. de Valenod informed Julien that the manager of the
lottery office at Verrieres had just died. Julien thought it
humorous to give that place to M. de Cholin, the old dotard
whose petition he had once picked up in de la Mole's room.
The marquis laughed heartily at the petition, which Julien
recited as he made him sign the letter which requested that
appointment of the minister of finance.

M. de Cholin had scarcely been nominated, when Julien
learnt that that post had been asked by the department for
the celebrated geometrician, monsieur Gros. That generous
man had an income of only 1400 francs, and every year had lent
600 to the late manager who had just died, to help him bring
up his family.

Julien was astonished at what he had done.

"That's nothing," he said to himself. " It will be necessary
to commit several other injustices if I mean to get on, and
also to conceal them beneath pretty, sentimental speeches.
Poor monsieur Gros ! It is he who deserves the cross. It is
I who have it, and I ought to conform to the spirit of the
Government which gives it me."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

WHAT IS THE DECORATION WHICH CONFERS DISTINCTION ?

" Thy water refreshes me not," said the transformed genie.
" 'Tis nevertheless the freshest well in ali Diar-Bekir Peliico.

One day Julien had just returned from the charming estate
of Villequier on the banks of the Seine, which was the especial
subject of M. de la Mole's interest because it was the only one
of all his properties which had belonged to the celebrated
Boniface de la Mole.

He found the marquise and her daughter, who had just
come back from Hyeres, in the hotel. Julien was a dandy
now, and understood the art of Paris life. He manifested a
perfect coldness towards mademoiselle de la Mole. He
seemed to have retained no recollection of the day when she
had asked him so gaily for details of his fall from his horse.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought that he had grown taller
and paler. There was no longer anything of the provincial
in his figure or his appearance. It was not so with his con-
versation. Too much of the serious and too much of the
positive element were still noticeable. In spite of these sober
qualities, his conversation, thanks to his pride, was destitute
of any trace of the subordinate. One simply felt that there
were still too many things which he took seriously. But one
saw that he was the kind of man to stick to his guns.

" He lacks lightness of touch, but not brains," said made-
moiselle de la Mole to her father, as she rallied him on the
cross that he had given Julien. " My brother has been asking
you for it for sixteen months, and he is a La Mole."

" Yes, but Julien has surprises, and that's what the de la
Mole, whom you were referring to, has never been guilty of."

M. the due de Retz was announced.

288 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Mathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible attack of
yawning. She knew so well the old gildings and the old
habitues of her father's salon. She conjured up an absolutely
boring picture of the life which she was going to take up at
Paris, and yet, when at Hyeres, she had regretted Paris.

"And yet I am nineteen," she thought. " That's the age of
happiness, say all those gilt-edged ninnies'."

She looked at eight or ten new volumes of poetry which
had accumulated on the table in the salon during her
journey in Provence. She had the misfortune to have more
brains than M.M. de Croisnois, de Caylus, de Luz, and her
other friends. She anticipated all that they were going to tell
her about the fine sky of Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.

These fine eyes, which were the home of the deepest ennui,
and worse still, of the despair of ever finding pleasure, lingered
on Julien. At any rate, he was not exactly like the others.

" Monsieur Sorel," she said, in that short, sharp voice,
destitute of all femininity, which is so frequent among young
women of the upper class.

" Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to-night to M. de Retz's
ball?"

" Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour of being
presented to M. the duke." (One would have said that these
words and that title seared the mouth of the proud provincial).

" He asked my brother to take you there, and if you go,
you could tell me some details about the Villequier estate.
We are thinking of going there in the spring, and I would like
to know if the chateau is habitable, and if the neighbouring
places are as pretty as they say. There are so many unmerited
reputations."

Julien did not answer.

" Come to the ball with my brother," she added, very dryly.

Julien bowed respectfully.

" So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in
the middle of a ball. Am I not paid to be their business
man?" His bad temper added, "God knows, moreover, if
what I tell the daughter will not put out the plans of the
father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of a
sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and
yet give no one any right to complain."

" How that big girl displeases me ! " he thought, as he

WHICH DECORATION DISTINGUISHES? 289

watched the walk of Mademoiselle de la Mole, whom her
mother had called to present to several women friends of
hers. She exaggerates all the fashions. Her dress almost
falls down to her shoulders, she is even paler than before she
went away. How nondescript her hair has grown as the
result of being blonde ! You would say that the light passed
through it.

What a haughty way of bowing and of looking at you !
What queenly gestures ! Mademoiselle de la Mole had just
called her brother at the moment when he, was leaving the
salon.

The comte de Norbert approached Julien.

" My dear Sorel," he said to him. " Where would you like
me to pick you up to-night for Monsieur's ball. He expressly
asked me to bring you."

" I know well whom I have to thank for so much kindness,"
answered Julien bowing to the ground.

His bad temper, being unable to find anything to lay hold
of in the polite and almost sympathetic tone in which Norbert
had spoken to him, set itself to work on the answer he had
made to that courteous invitation. He detected in it a trace
of subservience.

When he arrived at the ball in the evening, he was struck
with the magnificence of the Hotel de Retz. The courtyard
at the entrance was covered with an immense tent of crimson
with golden stars. Nothing could have been more elegant.
Beyond the [tent, the court had been transformed into a wood
of orange trees and of pink laurels in full flower. As they had
been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep, the laurel trees
and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of the
ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.

All this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had
never had any idea of such magnificence. In a single instant
his thrilled imagination had left his bad temper a thousand
leagues behind. In the carriage on their way to the ball
Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything in black
colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the
r61es changed.

Norbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst
of all that magnificence, had not been able to be attended to.
He calculated the expense of each item, and Julien remarked

19

2 9 o THE RED AND THE BLACK

that the nearer he got to a sum total, the more jealous and
bad-tempered he appeared.

As for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when
he reached the first of the salons where they were dancing.
His emotion was so great that it almost made him nervous.
There was a crush at the door of the second salon, and the
crowd was so great that he found it impossible to advance.
The decorations of the second salon presented the Alhambra
of Grenada.

"That's the queen of the ball one must admit," said a
young man with a moustache whose shoulder stuck into
Julien's chest.

" Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the
winter, realises that she will have to go down to the second
place. See how strange she looks."

" In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look
at that gracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that
quadrille all alone. On my honour it is unique."

" Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the
pleasure which she derives from her triumph, of which she is
perfectly conscious. One might say that she fears to please
anyone who talks to her."

" Very good. That is the art of alluring."

Julien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring
woman. Seven or eight men who were taller than he pre-
vented him from seeing her.

" There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve,"
said the young man with a moustache.

" And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly
when one would think they were on the point of betraying
themselves," answered his neighbour. " On my faith, nothing
could be cleverer."

"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to
her," said the first.

"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I
spend on you if you were the man who was worthy of me."

" And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde," said
the first man. " Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty,
well-made, a hero in war, and twenty years old at the most."

"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia .... who
would be made a sovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite

WHICH DECORATION DISTINGUISHES? 291

simply the comte de Thaler, who looks like a dressed-up
peasant."

The door was free, and Julien could go in.

" Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth
while for me to study her," he thought. " I shall then under-
stand what these people regard as perfection."

As his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him.
" My duty calls me," said Julien to himself. But it was only
his expression which was bad-humoured.

His curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the
extremely low cut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly
accentuated, in a manner which was scarcely flattering for his
own self-respect. " Her beauty has youth," he thought. Five
or six people, whom Julien recognised as those who had been
speaking at the door were between her and him.

" Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter," she said
to him. " Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the
season "

He did not answer.

"This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and
those ladies dance it perfectly." The young men turned
round to see who was the happy man, an answer from whom
was positively insisted on. The answer was not encouraging.

" I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I
pass my life in writing. This is the first ball of this magnifi-
cence which I have ever seen."

The young men with moustaches were scandalised.

"You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel," came the answer
with a more marked interest. " You look upon all these balls,
all these festivities, like a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau.
All these follies astonish without alluring you."

Julien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which
banished all illusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the
expression of a perhaps slightly exaggerated disdain.

" J. J. Rousseau," he answered, " is in my view only a fool
when he takes it upon himself to criticise society. He did
not understand it, and he went into it with the spirit of a
lackey who has risen above his station."

" He wrote the Contrat Social" answered Mathilde
reverently.

"While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of

292 THE RED AND THE BLACK

monarchical dignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with hap-
piness if a duke would go out of his way after dinner to
one of his friends."

" Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used
to accompany a Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris,"
went on Mademoiselle de la Mole, with all the pleasure and
enthusiasm of her first flush of pedantry. She was intoxicated
with her knowledge, almost like the academican who dis-
covered the existence of King Feretrius.

Julien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde
had had a moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness
disconcerted her profoundly. She was all the more astonished,
as it was she who was accustomed to produce that particular
effect on others.

At this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing
eagerly towards mademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a
moment three yards away from her. He was unable to get
closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the obstacle.
The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a
cousin of Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband
who had only married her a fortnight ago. The marquis de
Rouvray, who was also very young, had all the love which
seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage of convenience
exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who is
ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death
of a very old uncle.

While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get
through the crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big
divinely blue eyes on him and his neighbours. " Could
anything be flatter," she said to herself. " There is Croisenois
who wants to marry me, he is gentle and polite, he has perfect
manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not bore, those
gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would ac-
company me to the ball with that smug limited expression.
One year after the marriage I shall have my carriage, my
horses, my dresses, my chateau twenty leagues from Paris.
All this would be as nice as possible, and enough to make a
Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and afterwards "

Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de
Croisenois managed to approach her and spoke to her, but
she was dreaming and did not listen to him. The noise of

WHICH DECORATION DISTINGUISHES? 293

his words began to get mixed with the buzz of the ball.
Her eye mechanically followed Julien who had gone away,
with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud and
discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving
crowd, the comte Altamira who had been condemned to
death in his own country and whom the reader knows already.
One of his relatives had manied a Prince de Conti in the
reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was some protection
against the police of the congregation.

" I think being condemned to death is the only real
distinction," said Mathilde. " It is the only thing which
cannot be bought."

"Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did
not come at a moment when I could have reaped all the
credit for it." Mathilde had too much taste to work into the
conversation a prepared epigram but at the same time she was
too vain not to be extremely pleased with herself. A happy
expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face. The
marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a
chance of success and waxed twice as eloquent.

" What objection could a caviller find with my epigram,"
said Mathilde to herself. " I would answer my critic in this
way : The title of baron or vicomte is to be bought ; a
cross, why it is a gift. My brother has just got one. What
has he done? A promotion, why that can be obtained by
being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war for
a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert.
A great fortune ! That's rather more difficult, and conse-
quently more meritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the
opposite of what the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you
marry M. Rothschild's daughter. Really my epigram is quite
deep. Being condemned to death is still the one privilege
which one has never thought of canvassing."

" Do you know the comte Altamira," she said to M. de
Croisenois.

Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this
question had so little connection with all that the poor
marquis had been saying for the last five minutes, that his
good temper was ruffled. He was nevertheless a man of
wit and celebrated for being so.

" Mathilde is eccentric," he thought, " that's a nuisance,

294 THE RED AND THE BLACK

but she will give her husband such a fine social position. I
don't know how the marquis de la Mole manages. He is
connected with all that is best in all parties. He is a man
who is bound to come out on top. And, besides, this ec-
centricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when
allied with good birth an 1 a large fortune, so far from being
ridiculous, is highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover,
when she wants to, that mixture in fact of brains, character,
and ready wit which constitute perfection."

As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the
marquis answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as
though he were reciting a lesson.

" Who does not know that poor Altamira ? " and he told
her the history of his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and
absurd.

" Very absurd," said Mathilde as if she were talking to
herself, " but he has done something. I want to see a man ;
bring him to me," she said to the scandalized marquis.

Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of
mademoiselle de la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner.
In his opinion she was one of the most beautiful persons in Paris.

" How fine she would be on a throne," he said to M. de
Croisenois; and made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.

There are a good number of people in society who would
like to establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a
conspiracy- in the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jaco-
binism. And what could be more sordid than unsuccessful
Jacobinism.

Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and
M. de Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.

" A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast," she thought.
She thought that this man with his black moustache looked
like a lion at rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had
only one point of view : utility, admiration for utility.

The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention
except what tended to give his country two chamber govern-
ment. He left Mathilde, who was the prettiest person at
the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a Peruvian general
come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich
had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking
that when the States of South America had become strong

VHICH DECORATION DISTINGUISHES? 295

and powerful they could restore to Europe the liberty which
Mirabeau has given it.

A crowd of moustachised young men had approached
Mathilde. She realized that Altamira had not felt allured,
and was piqued by his departure. She saw his black eye
gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general. Mademoiselle
de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that
profound seriousness which none of her arrivals could imitate,
" which of them," she thought, " could get himself condemned
to death, even supposing he had a favourable opportunity ? "

This singular look flattered those who were not very
intelligent, but disconcerted the others. They feared the
discharge of some stinging epigram that would be difficult
to answer.

" Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence
would offend me. I see as much in the case of Julien," thought
Mathilde, " but it withers up those qualities of soul which make
a man get condemned to death."

At that moment some one was saying near her : " Comte
Altamara is the second son of the Prince of San Nazaro-
Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who tried to save Conradin,
was beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest families in
Naples."

" So," said Mathilde to herself, " what a pretty proof this is
of my maxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of
character in default of which a man does not get condemned
to death. I seem doomed to reason falsely to-night. Since
I am only a woman like any other, well I must dance." She
yielded to the solicitations of M. de Croisenois who had been
asking for a gallop for the last hour. To distract herself
from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point of
being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted.
But neither the dance nor her wish to please one of the
handsomest men at court, nor anything at all, succeeded in
distracting Mathilde. She could not possibly have been more
of a success. She was the queen of the ball. She coldly
appreciated the fact.

"What a blank life I shall pass with a person like
Croisenois," she said to herself as he took her back to her
place an hour afterwards. " What pleasure do I get," she
added sadly, " if after an absence of six months I find myself

296 THE RED AND THE BLACK

at a ball which all the women of Paris were mad with jealousy
to go to ? And what is more I am surrounded by the homage
of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois
are some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet,"
she added with increasing sadness, " what advantages has not
fate bestowed upon me ! Distinction, fortune, youth, every-
thing except happiness. My most dubious advantages are the
very ones they have been speaking to me about all the'evening.
Wit, I believe I have it, because I obviously frighten every-
one. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they will
arrive after five minutes of conversation and as though they
had made a great discovery at a conclusion which we have
been repeating to them for the last hour. I am beautiful, I
have that advantage for which madame de Stael would have
sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of boredom. Shall I
have reason to be less bored when I have changed my name
for that of the marquis de Croisenois ?

" My God though," she added, while she almost felt as if
she would like to cry, " isn't he really quite perfect ? He's a
paragon of the education of the age ; you can't look at him
without his finding something charming and even witty to say
to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is strange," she said
to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed from
melancholy to anger. " I told him that I had something to
say to him and he hasn't deigned to reappear."

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE BALL

The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles ;
all those pretty arms and fine shoulders ; the bouquets,
the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of
Ciceri. I am beside myself. Journeys of Useri.

" You are in a bad temper," said the marquise de la Mole to
her ; " let me caution you, it is ungracious at a ball."

" I only have a headache," answered Mathilde disdainfully,
" it is too hot here."

At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell
down, as though to justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark.
They were obliged to carry him away. They talked about
apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.

Mathilde did not bother much about it.

She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone
who had the reputation of being bad company.

She danced in order to escape the conversation about the
apoplexy, which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put
in an appearance the following day.

" But Sorel does not come," she said to herself after she
had danced. She was almost looking round for him when
she found him in another salon. Astonishing, but he seemed
to have lost that impassive coldness that was so natural to
him ; he no longer looked English.

" He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to
death," said Mathilde to herself. " His eye is full of a sombre
fire ; he looks like a prince in disguise ; his haughtiness has
become twice as pronounced."

Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira.
She looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order

298 THE RED AND THE BLACK

to trace those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour
of being condemned to death.

" Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by
her, " Danton was a real man."

" Heavens can he be a Danton ? " said Mathilde to herself,
" but he has so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly
ugly, a butcher I believe." Julien was still fairly near her.
She did not hesitate to call him ; she had the consciousness
and the pride of putting a question that was unusual for a
young girl.

" Was not Danton a butcher ? " she said to him.
" Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her
with the most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His
eyes were still ardent from his conversation with Altamira,
" but unfortunately for the people of good birth he was an
advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that is to say, mademoiselle," he
added maliciously, " he began like many peers whom I see
here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great dis-
advantage in the eyes of beauty ; he was ugly."

These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extra-
ordinary and indeed very discourteous manner."

Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and
with an air of proud humility. He seemed to be saying, " I
am paid to answer you and I live on my pay." He did not
deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked like his slave with
her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on him.
Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a
valet looking at his master to receive orders. Although his
eyes met the full gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all
the time with a strange expression, he went away with a
marked eagerness.

" To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said
Mathilde to herself as she emerged from her reverie, " praising
ugliness in such a way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois.
This Sorel has something like my father's look when he goes
to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon." She had completely
forgotten Danton. "Yes, I am decidedly bored tonight."
She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him
take her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of
following the conversation between Julien and the man who
had been condemned to death.

THE BALL 299

The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them,
however, at the moment when two yards in front of her
Altamira was going near a dumb-waiter to take an ice. He
was talking to Julien with his body half turned round. He
saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an ice
close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention.
He turned round to look at the person to whom the arm
belonged. His noble and yet simple eyes immediately
assumed a slightly disdainful expression.

" You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice ;

" that is the Prince of Araceli Ambassador of He

asked M. de Nerval, your Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my
extradition this morning. See, there he is over there playing
whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing enough to give me up,
for we gave up two or three conspirators to you in 18 16. If
I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four
hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed
gentlemen who will arrest me."

" The wretches ! " exclaimed Julien half aloud.

Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her
ennui had vanished.

" They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. " I
talk to you about myself in order to give you a vivid impression.
Look at the Prince of Araceli. He casts his eyes on his
golden fleece every five minutes ; he cannot get over the
pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast. In reality
the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a
signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been
nowhere near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as
people of birth are concerned, you have to be an Araceli to
be delighted with it. He had a whole town hanged in order
to get it."

"Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.

" Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, " he probably had
about thirty rich landed proprietors in his district who had the
reputation of being Liberals thrown into the river."

" What a monster ! " pursued Julien.

Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward
with keenest interest was so near him that her beautiful hair
almost touched his shoulder.

" You are very young," answered Altamira. " I was telling

306 THE RED AND THE BLACK

you that I had a married sister in Provence. She is still
pretty, good and gentle ; she is an excellent mother, performs
all her duties faithfully, is pious but not a bigot."

" What is he driving at ? " thought mademoiselle de la Mole.

" She is happy," continued the comte Altamira ; " she was so
in 1815. I was then in hiding at her house on her estate near
d'Antibos. Well the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's
execution she began to dance."

" Is it possible ? " said Julien, thunderstruck.

" It's party spirit," replied Altamira. " There are no longer
any real passions in the nineteenth century : that's why one
is so bored in France. People commit acts of the greatest
cruelty, but without any feeling of cruelty."

" So much the worse," said Julien, " when one does commit
a crime one ought at least to take pleasure in committing it;
that's the only good thing they have about them and that's the
only way in which they have the slightest justification."

Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she
owed to herself and placed herself completely between Altamira
and Julien. Her brother, who was giving her his arm, and
was accustomed to obey her, was looking at another part of
the room, and in order to keep himself in countenance was
pretending to be stopped by the crowd.

"You are right," Altamira went on, "one takes pleasure in
nothing one does, and one does not remember it : this applies
even to crimes. I can show you perhaps ten men in this
ballroom who have been convicted of murder. They have
forgotten all about it and everybody else as well."

" Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks
a paw. When you throw flowers on their grave at Pere-la-
Chaise, as you say so humorously in Paris, we learn they
united all the virtues of the knights of chivalry, and we speak
about the noble feats of their great-grandfather who lived in the
reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of the good offices of the
Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever manage to enjoy
the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine with
eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.

" At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose
blood is pure, but I shall be despised and almost hated as a
monster, while you will be simply despised as a man of the
people who has pushed his way into good society."

THE BALL 301

" Nothing could be truer," said mademoiselle de la Mole.

Altamira looked at her in astonishment ; but Julien did not
deign to look at her.

" Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found
myself," continued the comte Altamira, " only failed for the
one reason that I would not cut off three heads and distribute
among our partisans seven or eight millions which happened
to be in a box of which I happened to have the key. My
king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called
me by my christian name before the rebellion, would have
given me the great ribbon of his order if I had had those three
heads cut off and had had the money in those boxes dis-
tributed; for I should have had at least a semi-success and

my country would have had a charta like So wags the

world ; it's a game of chess."

" At that time," answered Julien with a fiery eye, " you did
not know the game ; now . . ."

" You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would
not be a Girondin, as you said I was the other day ? I will
give you your answer," said Altamira sadly, " when you have
killed a man in a duel a far less ugly matter than having him
put to death by an executioner."

" Upon my word," said Julien, " the end justifies the means.
If instead of being an insignificant man I had some power I
would have three men hanged in order to save four men's
lives."

His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience ; they met
the eyes of mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him,
and their contempt, so far from changing into politeness
seemed to redouble.

She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to
forget Julien ; she dragged her brother away and went off in
a temper.

" I must take some punch and dance a lot," she said to
herself. " I will pick out the best partner and cut some
figure at any price. Good, there is that celebrated cynic, the
comte de Fervaques." She accepted his invitation ; they
danced. " The question is," she thought, " which of us two
will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute
fun of him, I must get him to talk." Soon all the other
members of the quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality,

3 o2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

they did not want to lose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte.
M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and as he could only find elegant
expressions instead of ideas, began to scowl. Mathilde, who
was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy of him.
She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.
But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left,
was still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had
been despised by Julien and could not despise him.

Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted
without his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty
women, the general elegance, and above all by his own
imagination which dreamt of distinctions for himself and of
liberty for all.

" What a fine ball," he said to the comte. " Nothing is
lacking."

" Thought is lacking " answered Altamira, and his face
betrayed that contempt which is only more deadly from the
very fact that a manifest effort is being made to hide it as a
matter of politeness.

" You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought
at all, let alone enough to make a conspiracy."

" I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in
your salons. Thought must not soar above the level of the
point of a Vaudeville couplet : it is then rewarded. But as
for your man who thinks, if he shows energy and originality
we call him a cynic. Was not that name given by one of your
judges to Courier. You put him in prison as well as Berenger.
The priestly congregation hands over to the police everyone
who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good
society applauds.

" The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above
everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery.
You will have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing
in France except vanity. A man who goes on speaking on
the spur of the moment may easily come to make an im-
prudent witticism and the master of the house thinks himself
insulted."

As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was
seeing Julien home stopped before the hdtel de la Mole.
Julien was in love with his conspirator. Altamira had paid
him this great compliment which was evidently the expression

THE BALL 303

of a sound conviction. " You have not got the French
flippancy and you understand the principle of utility." It
happened that Julien had seen the day before Marino Faliero,
a tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.

" Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those
noble Venetians ? " said our rebellious plebeian to himself,
"and yet those are the people whose nobility goes back to
the year seven hundred, a century before Charlemagne, while
the cream of the nobility at M. de Ritz's ball to-night only
goes back, and that rather lamely, to the thirteenth century.
Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose birth makes
so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.

" A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social
caprice. There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is
given him by the way in which he faces death. The intellect
itself loses some of its power.

" What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the
Valenods and the Renals ? Not even a deputy for the
Public Prosecutor.

"What am I saying? He would have sold himself to
the priests, he would have been a minister, for after all the
great Danton did steal. Mirabeau also sold himself.
Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise he would have
been stopped short in his career by poverty like Pichegru.
Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,
ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question
pulled him up short. He passed the rest of the night in
reading the history of the revolution.

When he wrote his letters in the library the following day,
his mind was still concentrated on his conversation with count
Altamira.

"As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long
reverie, " If the Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation
by crimes they would not have been cleared out as easily as
they were.

"They were haughty, talkative children just like I am!"
he suddenly exclaimed as though waking up with a start.

" What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to
judge such devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I
am like a man who exclaims at the close of a meal, ' I won't
dine to-morrow; but that won't prevent me from feeling as

3 o4 THE RED AND THE BLACK

strong and merry like I do to-day.' Who knows what one
feels when one is half-way through a great action ? "

These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected
arrival in the library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was
so animated by his admiration for the great qualities of such
invincibles as Danton, Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he
fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de la Mole, he neither gave
her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely even saw her.
When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence, their
expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it
with bitterness.

It was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of
France which was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated
Julien going to fetch the longer of the two ladders. Julien
had brought the ladder and had fetched the volume and given
it to her, but had not yet been able to give her a single thought.
As he was taking the ladder back he hit in his hurry one of
the glass panes in the library with his elbow ; the noise of the
glass falling on the floor finally brought him to himself. He
hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la' Mole. He
tried to be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde
saw clearly that she had disturbed him, and that he would
have preferred to have gone on thinking about what he had
been engrossed in before her arrival, to speaking to her.
After looking at him for some time she went slowly away.
Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her
present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous
night. The difference between the two expressions was
equally striking. The young girl who had been so haughty at
the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the present moment, an
almost plaintive expression. " As a matter of fact," said
Julien to himself, " that black dress makes the beauty of her
figure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage ;
but why is she in mourning ? "

" If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will
think I am putting my foot in it again." Julien had now quite
emerged from the depth of his enthusiasm. " I must read over
again all the letters I have written this morning. God knows
how many missed out words and blunders I shall find. As
he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the first
of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.

THE BALL 305

He suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two
yards from his table, she was smiling. This second
interruption put Julien into a bad temper. Mathilde had
just fully realized that she meant nothing to this young man.
Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she
succeeded in doing so.

" You are evidently thinking of something very interesting,
Monsieur Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that
conspiracy which is responsible for comte Altamira being in
Paris ? Tell me what it is about, I am burning to know. I
will be discreet, I swear it." She was astonished at hearing
herself utter these words. What ! was she asking a favour of
an inferior ! Her embarrassment increased, and she added
with a little touch of flippancy,

"What has managed to turn such a usually cold person
as yourself, into an inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo
prophet ? "

This sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply,
and rendered him madder than ever.

" Was Danton right in stealing ? " he said to her brusquely
in a manner that grew more and more surly. "Ought the
revolutionaries of Piedmont and of Spain to have injured the
people by crimes ? To have given all the places in the army
and all the orders to undeserving persons ? Would not the
persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the
king ? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to
be looted ? In a word, mademoiselle," he said, coming near
her with a terrifying expression, " ought the man who wishes
to chase ignorance and crime from the world to pass like the
whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately ? "

Mathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and
retreated a couples of paces. She looked at him a moment,
and then ashamed of her own fear, left the library with a light
step.

?o

CHAPTER XL

QUEEN MARGUERITE

Love ! In what madness do you not manage to make us find pleasure !

Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

Julien reread his letters. " How ridiculous I must have
appeared in the eyes of that Parisian doll," he said to himself
when the dinner-bell rang. " How foolish to have really told
her what I was thinking ! Perhaps it was not so foolish.
Telling the truth on that occasion was worthy of me. Why did
she come to question me on personal matters ? That
question was indiscreet on her part. She broke the convention.
My thoughts about Danton are not part of the sacrifice
which her father pays me to make."

When he came into the dining-room Julien's thoughts were
distracted from his bad temper by mademoiselle de la Mole's
mourning which was all the more striking because none of the
other members of the family were in black.

After dinner he felt completely rid of the feeling which had
obsessed him all day. Fortunately the academician who
knew Latin was at dinner. "That's the man who will make
the least fun of me," said Julien to himself, " if, as I surmise, my
question about mademoiselle de la Mole's mourning is in bad
taste."

Mathilde was looking at him with a singular expression.
" So this is the coquetry of the women of this part of the
country, just as madame de Renal described it to me," said
Julien to himself. " I was not nice to her this morning. I did
not humour her caprice of talking to me. I got up in value
in her eyes. The Devil doubtless is no loser by it.

" Later on her haughty disdain will manage to revenge her-
self. I defy her to do her worst. What a contrast with what

QUEEN MARGUERITE 307

I have lost ! What charming naturalness ? What naivety !
I used to know her thoughts before she did herself. I used
to see them come into existence. The only rival she had in
her heart was the fear of her childrens' death. It was a reason-
able, natural feeling to me, and even though I suffered from it
I found it charming. I have been a fool. The ideas I had
in my head about Paris prevented me from appreciating that
sublime woman.

" Great God what a contrast and what do I find here ? Arid,
haughty vanity : all the fine shades of wounded egotism and
nothing more."

They got up from table. " I must not let my academician
get snapped up," said Julien to himself. He went up to him
as they were passing into the garden, assumed an air of soft
submissiveness and shared in his fury against the success of
Hernani.

" If only we were still in the days of lettres de cachet ! " he
said.

" Then he would not have dared," exclaimed the academician
with a gesture worthy of Talma.

Julien quoted some words from Virgil's Georgics in reference
to a flower and expressed the opinion that nothing was equal
to the abbe Delille's verses. In a word he flattered the
academician in every possible way. He then said to him with
the utmost indifference. " I suppose mademoiselle de la Mole
has inherited something from some uncle for whom she is in
mourning."

" What ! you belong to the house ? " said the academician
stopping short, " and you do not know her folly ? As a
matter of fact it is strange her mother should allow her to do
such things, but between ourselves, they do not shine in this
household exactly by their force of character. Mademoiselle's
share has to do for all of them, and governs them. To-day is
the thirtieth of April ! " and the academician stopped and looked
meaningly at Julien. Julien smiled with the most knowing
expression he could master. " What connection can there be
between ruling a household, wearing a black dress, and the
thirtieth April?" he said to himself. " I must be even sillier
.han I thought."

" I must confess . . ." he said to the academician while he
ontinued to question hi m with his look. " Let us take a turn

3 o8 THE RED AND THE BLACK

round the garden," said the academician deilghted at seeing
an opportunity of telling a long and well-turned story.

" What ! is it really possible you do not know what happened
on the 30th April, 1574 ?"

" And where ? " said Julien in astonishment.

" At the place de Greve."

Julien was extremely astonished that these words did not
supply him with the key. His curiosity and his expectation
of a tragic interest which would be in such harmony with his
own character gave his eyes that brilliance which the teller of
a story likes to see so much in the person who is listening to
him. The academician was delighted at finding a virgin ear,
and narrated at length to Julien how Boniface de la Mole, the
handsomest young man of this century together with Annibal
de Coconasso, his friend, a gentleman of Piedmont, had been
beheaded on the 30th April, 1574. La Mole was the adored
lover of Queen Marguerite of Navarre and " observe," con-
tinued the academician, " that mademoiselle de La Mole's full
name is Mathilde Marguerite. La Mole was at the same time
a favourite of the Duke d'Alencon and the intimate friend of
his mistress's husband, the King of Navarre, subsequently Henri
IV. On Shrove Tuesday of that year 1574, the court happened
to be at St. Germain with the poor king Charles IX. who was
dying. La Mole wished to rescue his friends the princes,
whom Queen Catherine of Medici was keeping prisoner in her
Court. He advanced two hundred cavalry under the walls of
St. Germain; the Duke d'Alencon was frightened and La
Mole was thrown to the executioner.

" But the thing which affects mademoiselle Mathilde, and
what she has admitted to me herself seven or eight years ago
when she was twelve, is a head ! a head ! and the acade-
mician lifted up his eyes to the heavens. What struck her in
this political catastrophe, was the hiding of Queen Marguerite
de Navarre in a house in the place de Greve and her then
asking for her lover's head. At midnight on the following day
she took that head in her carriage and went and buried it her-
self in a chapel at the foot of the hill at Montmartre."

" Impossible? " cried Julien really moved.

" Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you
see, he does not bother one whit about this ancient history,
and never wears mourning on the thirtieth of April. It is since

QUEEN MARGUERITE 309

the time of this celebrated execution and in order to recall the
intimate friendship of La Mole for the said Coconasso, who
Italian that he was, bore the name of Annibal that all the men
of that family bear that name. And," added the academician
lowering his voice, " this Coconasso was, according to Charles
IX. himself, one of the cruellest assassins of the twenty-fourth
August, 1572. But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that you
should be ignorant of these things you who take your meals
with the family."

" So that is why mademoiselle de la Mole twice called her
brother Annibal at dinner. I thought I had heard wrong."

" It was a reproach. It is strange that the marquise should
allow such follies. The husband of that great girl will have a
fine time of it."

This remark was followed by five or six satiric phrases.
Julien was shocked by the joy which shone in the academician's
eyes. " We are just a couple of servants," he thought,
" engaged in talking scandal about our masters. But I ought
not to be astonished at anything this academy man does."

Julien had surprised him on his knees one day before the
marquise de la Mole ; he was asking her for a tobacco receiver-
ship for a nephew in the provinces. In the evening a little
chambermaid of mademoiselle de la Mole, who was paying
court to Julien, just as Elisa had used to do, gave him to
understand that her mistress's mourning was very far from
being worn simply to attract attention. This eccentricity was
rooted in her character. She really loved that la Mole, the
beloved lover of the most witty queen of the century, who had
died through trying to set his friends at liberty and what
friends ! The first prince of the blood and Henri IV.

Accustomed as he had been to the perfect naturalness
which shone throughout madame de Renal's whole demeanour,
Julien could not help finding all the women of Paris affected,
and, though by no means of a morose disposition, found
nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de la Mole was an
exception.

He now began to cease taking for coldness of heart that
kind of beauty which attaches importance to a noble bearing.
He had long conversations with mademoiselle de la Mole,
who would sometimes walk with him in the garden after
dinner. She told him one day that she was reading the

3 io THE RED AND THE BLACK

History of D'Aubigne and also Brantome. " Strange books
to read," thought Julien ; " and the marquis does not allow
her to read Walter Scott's novels ! "

She told him one day, with that pleased brilliancy in her
eyes, which is the real test of genuine admiration, about a
characteristic act of a young woman of the reign of Henry III.,
which she had just read in the memoirs of L'Etoile. Finding
her husband unfaithful she stabbed him.

Julien's vanity was flattered. A person who was surrounded
by so much homage, and who governed the whole house,
according to the academician, deigned to talk to him on a
footing almost resembling friendship.

" I made a mistake,'' thought Julien soon afterwards.
"This is not familiarity, I am simply the confidante of a
tragedy, she needs to speak to someone. I pass in this family
for a man of learning. I will go and read Brantome,
D'Aubigne, L'Etoile. I shall then be able to challenge some
of the anecdotes which madame de la Mole speaks to me
about. I want to leave off this role of the passive .confidante."

His conversations with this young girl, whose demeanour
was so impressive and yet so easy, gradually became more
interesting. He forgot his grim role of the rebel plebian.
He found her well-informed and even logical. Her opinions
in the gardens were very different to those which she owned
to in the salon. Sometimes she exhibited an enthusiasm and
a frankness which were in absolute contrast to her usual cold
haughtiness.

" The wars of the League were the heroic days of France,"
she said to him one day, with eyes shining with enthusiasm.
" Then everyone fought to gain something which he desired, for
the sake of his party's triumph, and not just in order to win a
cross as in the days of your emperor. Admit that there was
then less egotism and less pettiness. I love that century."

"And Boniface de la Mole was the hero of it," he said to
her.

" At least he was loved in a way that it is perhaps sweet to
be loved. What woman alive now would not be horrified at
touching the head of her decapitated lover ? "

Madame de la Mole called her daughter. To be effective
hypocrisy ought to hide itself, yet Julien had half confided his
admiration for Napoleon to mademoiselle de la Mole.

QUEEN MARGUERITE 311

Julien remained alone in the garden. " That is the immense
advantage they have over us," he said to himself. "Their
ancestors lift them above vulgar sentiments, and they have not
got always to be thinking about their subsistence ! What
misery," he added bitterly. " I am not worthy to discuss
these great matters. My life is nothing more than a series of
hypocrisies because I have not got a thousand francs a year
with which to buy my bread and butter."

Mathilde came running back. "What are you dreaming
about, monsieur ? " she said to him.

Julien was tired of despising himself. Through sheer pride
he frankly told her his thoughts. He blushed a great deal
while talking to such a person about his own poverty. He
tried to make it as plain as he could that he was not asking
for anything. Mathilde never thought him so handsome ; she
detected in him an expression of frankness and sensitiveness
which he often lacked.

Within a month of this episode Julien was pensively walking
in the garden of the hotel ; but his face had no longer the
hardness and philosophic superciliousness which the chronic
consciousness of his inferior position had used to write upon
it. He had just escorted mademoiselle de la Mole to the
door of the salon. She said she had hurt her foot while running
with her brother.

" She leaned on my arm in a very singular way," said
Julien to himself. " Am I a coxcomb, or is it true that she
has taken a fancy to me ? She listens to me so gently, even
when I confess to her all the sufferings of my pride ! She too,
who is so haughty to everyone ! They would be very
astonished in the salon if they saw that expression of hers.
It is quite certain that she does not show anyone else such
sweetness and goodness."

Julien endeavoured not to exaggerate this singular friend-
ship. He himself compared it to an armed truce. When
they met again each day, they almost seemed before they
took up the almost intimate tone of the previous day to ask
themselves " are we going to be friends or enemies to-day ? "
Julien had realised that to allow himself to be insulted with
impunity even once by this haughty girl would mean the loss
of everything. " If I have got to quarrel would it not be
better that it should be straight away in defending the rights

312 THE RED AND THE BLACK

of my own pride, than in parrying the expressions of contempt
which would follow the slightest abandonment of my duty
to my own self-respect ? "

On many occasions, on days when she was in a bad temper
Mathilde, tried to play the great lady with him. These
attempts were extremely subtle, but Julien rebuffed them
roughly.

One day he brusquely interrupted her. " Has mademoiselle
de la Mole any orders to give her father's secretary ? " he said
to her. " If so he must listen to her orders, and execute
them, but apart from that he has not a single word to say to
her. He is not paid to tell her his thoughts."

This kind of life, together with the singular surmises which
it occasioned, dissipated the boredom which he had been
accustomed to experience in that magnificent salon, where
everyone was afraid, and where any kind of jest was in bad
form.

" It would be humorous if she loved me but whether she
loves me or not," went on Julien, " I have for my confidential
friend a girl of spirit before whom I see the whole household
quake, while the marquis de Croisenois does so more than
anyone else. Yes, to be sure, that same young man who is
so polite, so gentle, and so brave, and who has combined all
those advantages of birth and fortune a single one of which
would put my heart at rest he is madly in love with her,
he ought to marry her. How many letters has M. de la Mole
made me write to the two notaries in order to arrange the
contract ? And I, though I am an absolute inferior when I
have my pen in my hand, why, I triumph over that young
man two hours afterwards in this very garden ; for, after all,
her preference is striking and direct. Perhaps she hates him
because she sees in him a future husband. She is haughty
enough for that. As for her kindness to me, I receive it in
my capacity of confidential servant.

" But no, I am either mad or she is making advances to me ;
the colder and more respectful I show myself to her, the more
she runs after me. It may be a deliberate piece of affectation ;
but I see her eyes become animated when I appear unex-
pectedly. Can the women of Paris manage to act to such an
extent. What does it matter to me ! I have appearances in
my favour, let us enjoy appearances. Heavens, how beautiful

QUEEN MARGUERITE 313

she is ! How I like her great blue eyes when I see them at
close quarters, and they look at me in the way they often do ?
What a difference between this spring and that of last year,
when I lived an unhappy life among three hundred dirty
malicious hypocrites, and only kept myself afloat through
sheer force of character, I was almost as malicious as they
were."

" That young girl is making fun of me," Julien would think
in his suspicious days. "She is acting in concert with her
brother to make a fool of me. But she seems to have an
absolute contempt for her brother's lack of energy. He is
brave and that is all. He has not a thought which dares to
deviate from the conventional. It is always I who have to
take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of nineteen !
Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the day
to the part which one has determined to play. On the other
hand whenever mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me
with a singular expression comte Norbert always goes away.
I think that suspicious. Ought he not to be indignant at his
sister singling out a servant of her household ? For that is
how I heard the Duke de Chaulnes speak about me. This
recollection caused anger to supersede every other emotion.
It is simply a fashion for old fashioned phraseology on the
part of the eccentric duke ? "

" Well, she is pretty ! " continued Julien with a tigerish ex-
pression, " I will have her, I will then go away, and woe to
him who disturbs me in my flight."

This idea became Julien's sole preoccupation. He could
not think of anything else. His days passed like hours.

Every moment when he tried to concentrate on some
important matter his mind became a blank, and he would
wake up a quarter of an hour afterwards with a beating heart
and an anxious mind, brooding over this idea "does she
love me ? "

CHAPTER XLI

A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION

I admire her beauty but I fear her intellect. Merimie.

If Julien had employed the time which he spent in exaggerat-
ing Matilde's beauty or in working himself up into a rage against
that family haughtiness which she was forgetting for his sake
in examining what was going on in the salon, he would have
understood the secret of her dominion over all that surrounded
her.

When anyone displeased mademoiselle de La Mole she
managed to punish the offender by a jest which was so guarded,
so well chosen, so polite and so neatly timed, that the more
the victim thought about it, the sorer grew the wound. She
gradually became positively terrible to wounded vanity. As
she attached no value to many things which the rest of her
family very seriously wanted, she always struck them as self-
possessed. The salons of the aristocracy are nice enough to
brag about when you leave them, but that is all ; mere polite-
ness alone only counts for something in its own right during
the first few days. Julien experienced this after the first
fascination and the first astonishment had passed off. " Polite-
ness," he said to himself " is nothing but the absence of that
bad temper which would be occasioned by bad manners."
Mathilde was frequently bored ; perhaps she would have been
bored anywhere. She then found a real distraction and real
pleasure in sharpening an epigram.

It was perhaps in order to have more amusing victims than her
great relations, the academician and the five or six other men
of inferior class who paid her court, that she had given en-
couragement to the marquis de Croisenois, the comte Caylus

A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION 315

and two or three other young men of the highest rank. They
simply represented new subjects for epigrams.

We will admit with reluctance, for we are fond of Mathilde,
that she had received many letters from several of them and
had sometimes answered them. We hasten to add that this
person constitutes an exception to the manners of the century.
Lack of prudence is not generally the fault with which the
pupils of the noble convent of the Sacred Heart can be
reproached.

One day the marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a
fairly compromising letter which she had written the previous
night. He thought that he was thereby advancing his cause
a great deal by taking this highly prudent step. But the very
imprudence of her correspondence was the very element in it
Mathilde liked. Her pleasure was to stake her fate. She did
not speak to him again for six weeks.

She amused herself with the letters of these young men,
but in her view they were all like each other. It was invari-
ably a case of the most profound, the most melancholy,
passion.

"They all represent the same perfect man, ready to leave
for Palestine," she exclaimed to her cousin. " Can you con-
ceive of anything more insipid ? So these are the letters I am
going to receive all my life ! There can only be a change
every twenty years according to the kind of vogue which
happens to be fashionable. They must have had more
colour in them in the days of the Empire. In those days all
these young society men had seen or accomplished feats which

really had an element of greatness. The Duke of N my

uncle was at Wagram."

" What brains do you need to deal a sabre blow ? And
when they have had the luck to do that they talk of it
so often ! " said mademoiselle de Sainte-Heredite, Mathilde's
cousin.

" Well, those tales give me pleasure. Being in a real battle,
a battle of Napoleon, where six thousand soldiers were killed,
why, that's proof of courage. Exposing one's self to danger
elevates the soul and saves it from the boredom in which my
poor admirers seem to be sunk ; and that boredom is contagious.
Which of them ever thought of doing anything extraordinary ?
They are trying to win my hand, a pretty business to be sure !

316 THE RED AND THE BLACK

I am rich and my father will procure advancement for his son-
in-law. Well ! I hope he'll manage to find someone who is a
little bit amusing."

Mathilde's keen, sharp and picturesque view of life spoilt her
language as one sees. An expression of hers would often
constitute a blemish in the eyes of her polished friends. If
she had been less fashionable they would almost have owned
that her manner of speaking was, from the standpoint of
feminine delicacy, to some extent unduly coloured.

She, on her side, was very unjust towards the handsome
cavaliers who fill the Bois de Boulogne. She envisaged the
future not with terror, that would have been a vivid emotion,
but with a disgust which was very rare at her age.

What could she desire ? Fortune, good birth, wit, beauty,
according to what the world said, and according to what she
believed, all these things had been lavished upon her by the
hands of chance.

So this was the state of mind of the most envied heiress
of the faubourg Saint-Germain when she began to find
pleasure in walking with Julien. She was astonished at his
pride ; she admired the ability of the little bourgeois. " He
will manage to get made a bishop like the abbe Mouray," she
said to herself.

Soon the sincere and unaffected opposition with which our
hero received several of her ideas filled her mind ; she con-
tinued to think about it, she told her friend the slightest
details of the conversation, but thought that she would never
succeed in fully rendering all their meaning.

An idea suddenly flashed across her ; " I have the happi-
ness of loving," she said to herself one day with an incredible
ecstasy of joy. " I am in love, I am in love, it is clear !
Where can a young, witty and beautiful girl of my own age
find sensations if not in love ? It is no good. I shall never
feel any love for Croisenois, Caylus, and tutti quanti. They
are unimpeachable, perhaps too unimpeachable ; any way they
bore me."

She rehearsed in her mind all the descriptions of passion
which she had read in Manon Lescaut, the Nouvclle Heloise,
the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, etc., etc. It was only a
question of course of the grand passion; light love was un-
worthy of a girl of her age and birth. She vouchsafed the

A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION 317

name of love to that heroic sentiment which was met with in
France in the time of Henri III. and Bassompierre. That
love did not basely yield to obstacles, but, far from it, inspired
great deeds. " How unfortunate for me that there is not a
real court like that of Catherine de Medicis or of Louis XIII.
I feel equal to the boldest and greatest actions. What would
I not make of a king who was a man of spirit like Louis XIII.
if he were sighing at my feet ! I would take him to the
Vendee, as the Baron de Tolly is so fend of saying, and
from that base he would re-conquer his kingdom ; then no
more about a charter and Julien would help me. What
does he lack ? name and fortune. He will make a name,
he will win a fortune.

" Croisenois lacks nothing, and he will never be anything
else all his life but a duke who is half ' ultra ' and half
Liberal, an undecided being who never goes to extremes and
consequently always plays second fiddle.

" What great action is not an extreme at the moment when
it is undertaken ? It is only after accomplishment that it
seems possible to commonplace individuals. Yes, it is love
with all its miracles which is going to reign over my heart ; I
feel as much from the fire which is thrilling me. Heaven
owed me this boon. It will not then have lavished in vain
all its bounties on one single person. My happiness will be
worthy of me. Each day will no longer be the cold replica
of the day before. There is grandeur and audacity in the
very fact of daring to love a man, placed so far beneath me
by his social position. Let us see what happens, will he
continue to deserve me? I will abandon him at the first
sign of weakness which I detect. A girl of my birth and of
that mediaeval temperament which they are good enough to
ascribe to me (she was quoting from her father) must not
behave like a fool.

" But should I not be behaving like a fool if I were to love
the marquis de Croisenois? I should simply have a new
edition over again of that happiness enjoyed by my girl
cousins which I so utterly despise. I already know everything
the poor marquis would say to me and every answer I should
make. What's the good of a love which makes one yawn ?
One might as well be in a nunnery. I shall have a celebration
of the signing of a contract just like my younger cousin

3 i8 THE RED AND THE BLACK

when the grandparents all break down, provided of course
that they are not annoyed by some condition introduced
into the contract at the eleventh hour by the notary on the
other side."

CHAPTER XLII

IS HE A DANTON ?

The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character
of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was soon to
marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning at present in
France under the name of Henry IV. The need of staking some-
thing was the key to the character of this charming princess ;
hence her quarrels and reconciliations with her brothers from
the time when she was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl
stake ? The most precious thing she has : her reputation, the
esteem of a lifetime.

Memoirs of the Duke d? Angouleme.
the natural son of Charles IX.

"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is
no notary; everything is on the heroic plane, everything is
the child of chance. Apart from the noble birth which he
lacks, it is the love of Marguerite de Valois for the young La
Mole, the most distinguished man of the time, over again.
Is it my fault that the young men of the court are such great
advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere idea
of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary ?
A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest
pitch of their audacity, and moreover they can only march in
troops. As soon as they find themselves alone they are
frightened, not of the Bedouin's lance, but of ridicule and that
fear makes them mad.

" My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone.
This unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking
help or support in others ! He despises others, and that is
why I do not despise him.

" If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply
be a vulgar piece of stupidity, a sheer mesalliance; I would
have nothing to do with it ; it would be absolutely devoid
of the characteristic traits of grand passion the immensity

320 THE RED AND THE BLACK

of the difficulty to be overcome and the black uncertainty cf
the result."

Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty
arguments that without realising what she was doing, she
praised Julien to the marquis de Croisenois and her brother
on the following day. Her eloquence went so far that it
provoked them.

" You be careful of this young man who has so much
energy," exclaimed her brother ; " if we have another revolu-
tion he will have us all guillotined."

She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her
brother and the marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension
which energy caused them. " It is at bottom simply the fear
of meeting the unexpected, the fear of being non-plussed in
the presence of the unexpected "

"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster
which had the misfortune to die in 1816."

" Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are
two parties," M. de la Mole was fond of saying,

His daughter had understood the idea.

"So, gentlemen," she would say to Julien's enemies, "you
will be frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,
Ce littait pas un loup, ce rCen etait que F ombre."

Matilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her;
they occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she
regarded them as tantamount to the highest praise.

" His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is
dead. I will tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see
what answer he will make. But I will choose one of the
moments when his eyes are shining. Then he will not be
able to lie to me.

" He must be a Danton ! she added after a long and
vague reverie. Well, suppose the revolution begins again,
what figures will Croisenois and my brother cut then ? It is
settled in advance : Sublime resignation. They will be
heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut without
saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be
the fear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my
little Julien he would blow his brains out, however small a
chance he had of escaping. He is not frightened of doing
anything in bad form."

IS HE A DANTON? 321

These last words made her pensive ; they recalled painful
memories and deprived her of all her boldness. These words
reminded her of the jests of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de
Luz and her brother; these gentlemen joined in censuring
Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said was humble
and hypocritical.

" But," she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with
joy, " the very bitterness and the very frequency of their jests
prove in spite of themselves that he is the most distinguished
man whom we have seen this winter. What matter his defects
and the things which they make fun of? He has the element
of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they, the very
men who are so good and so charitable in other matters.
It is a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to
be a priest ; they are the heads of a squadron and never had
any need of studying ; they found it less trouble.

" In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and
of that priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he
isn't to die of hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could
be clearer. And as for that priest-like expression, why he no
longer has it after we have been alone for some moments,
and after those gentlemen have evolved what they imagine
to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their
first look towards Julien ? I have often noticed it. And yet
they know well that he never speaks to them unless he is
questioned. I am the only one whom he speaks to. He thinks
I have a lofty soul. He only answers the points they raise
sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts into respect-
fulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole hours,
he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest
objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot
fired all this winter ; words have been the only means of
attracting attention. Well, my father, who is a superior man
and will carry the fortunes of our house very far, respects
Julien. Every one else hates him, no one despises him
except my mother's devout friends."

The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great
passion for horses ; he passed his life in his stables and often
breakfasted there. This great passion, together with his habit
of never laughing, won for him much respect among his friends :
he was the eagle of the little circle.

21

322 THE RED AND THE BLACK

As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind
madame de la Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by
Croisenois and by Norbert, began in Julien's absence to
attack sharply the high opinion which Mathilde entertained
for Julien. He did this without any provocation, and almost
the very minute that he caught sight of mademeiselle de la
Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was
delighted with it.

" So there they are all leagued together," she said to
herself, " against a man of genius who has not ten louis a year
to bless himself with and who cannot answer them except in
so far as he is questioned. They are frightened of him, black
coat and all. But how would things stand if he had epaulettes ? "
She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and
his allies opened their attack than she riddled them with
sarcastic jests. When the fire of these brilliant officers was
at length extinguished she said to M. de Caylus.

" Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comte
mountains finds out to-morrow that Julien is his natural son
and gives him a name and some thousands of francs, why in
six months he will be an officer of hussars like you, gentlemen,
in six weeks he will have moustaches like you gentlemen.
And then his greatness of character will no longer be an object
of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the
future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority
of the court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where
will you be if I choose to push you to extremities and am
mischievous enough to make Julien's father a Spanish duke,
who was a prisoner of war at Besancon in the time of Napoleon,
and who out of conscientious scruples acknowledges him on
his death bed ? " MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois found all
these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That
was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.

His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his
submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit
did not harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face.
He ventured to say a few words.

" Are you ill ? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little
air of seriousness. " You must be very bad to answer jests
by moralizing."

" Moralizing from you ! Are you soliciting a job as prefect ? "

IS HE A DANTON? 323

Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus,
the bad temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de
Croisenois. She had to decide one way or the other a fatal
question which had just seized upon her soul.

"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself,
* a man at his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy
as he is by an extraordinary ambition, must have need of a
woman friend. I am perhaps that friend, but I see no sign
of love in him. Taking into account the audacity of his
character he would surely have spoken to me about his love."

This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which
henceforth monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection
with which she found new arguments each time that Julien
spoke to her, completely routed those fits of boredom to
which she had been so liable.

Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might
become a minister, mademoiselle de la Mole had been when
in the convent of the Sacred Heart, the object of the most
excessive flattery. This misfortune can never be compensated
for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all her
advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than
any one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes
and of all their follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea.
However intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of
ten be on one's guard against the flatteries of a whole convent,
which are apparently so well founded.

From the moment that she had decided that she loved
Julien, she was no longer bored. She congratulated herself
every day on having deliberately decided to indulge in
a grand passion. "This amusement is very dangerous,"
she thought. " All the better, all the better, a thousand times.
Without a grand passion I should be languishing in boredom
during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen to
twenty. I have already wasted my finest years : all my pleasure
consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of
my mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not
quite so strict, so they say, as their words of to-day."

It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of
uncertainly that Julien was baffled by those long looks of
hers which lingered upon him. He noticed, no doubt, an

324 THE RED AND THE BLACK

increased frigidity in the manner of comte Norbert, and a
fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de Caylus, de
Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He
would sometimes be their victim in this way at the end
of an evening when, in view of the position he occupied, he
had been unduly brilliant. Had it not been for the especial
welcome with which Mathilde would greet him, and the
curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would
have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young
men into the garden, when they accompained madamoiselle
de La Mole there, in the hour after dinner.

" Yes," Julien would say to himself, " it is impossible for
me to deceive myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me
in a very singular way. But even when her fine blue open
eyes are fixed on me, wide open with the most abandon, I
always detect behind them an element of scrutiny, self-
possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love ?
But how different to madame de Renal's looks ! "

One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de
La Mole into his study, was rapidly walking back to the
garden. He approached Mathilde's circle without any warning,
and caught some words pronounced in a very loud voice-
She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his name distinctly
pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately a
profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate -
it. Mademoiselle de La Mole and her brother were toe
animated to find another topic of conversation. MM. de
Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz, and one of their friends, mani-
fested an icy coldness to Julien. He went away.

CHAPTER XLIII

A PLOT

Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become transformed in
the eyes of an imaginative man into the most convincing proofs,
if he has any fire in his temperament. Schiller.

The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister
talking about him. A funereal silence was established on his
arrival as on the previous day. His suspicions were now un-
bounded. " Can these charming young people have started to
make fun of me ? I must own this is much more probable,
much more natural than any suggested passion on the part of
madamoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In
the first place, have those people got any passions at all?
Mystification is their strong point. They are jealous of my
poor little superiority in speaking. Being jealous again is one
of their weaknesses. On that basis everything is explicable.
Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to persuade me that
she is marking me out for special favour in order to show me
off to her betrothed ? "

This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psycholo-
gical condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love
which it had no difficulty in destroying. This love was only
founded on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly
manners and her admirable dresses. Julien was still a parvenu
in this respect. We are assured that there is nothing
equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant who is
at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to
first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character
which had given Julien food for dreams in the days that had
just passed. He had sufficient sense to realise that he knew
nothing about her character. All he saw of it might be merely
superficial.

326 THE RED AND THE BLACK

For instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on
Sunday for anything in the world. She accompanied her
mother there nearly every time. If when in the salon of the
hotel de La Mole some indiscreet man forgot where he was,
and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest against the
real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde
immediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch
expression re-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old
family portrait.

But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or
two of Voltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He
himself would often steal some tomes of that fine edition
which was so magnificently bound. By moving each volume
a little distance from the one next to it he managed to hide
the absence of the one he took away, but he soon noticed
that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to
a trick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair
on those volumes which he thought were likely to interest
mademoiselle de La Mole. They disappeared for whole
weeks.

M. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who
always sent him all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed
Julien to buy all the new books, which were at all stimulating.
But in order to prevent the poison spreading over the house-
hold, the secretary was ordered to place the books in a little
book-case that stood in the marquis's own room. He was
soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to
the interests of both State and Church, they very quickly dis-
appeared. It was certainly not Norbert who read them.

Julien attached undue importance to this discovery, and
attributed to mademoiselle de La Mole a Macchiavellian role.
This seeming depravity constituted a charm in his eyes, the
one moral charm, in fact, which she possessed. He was led
into this extravagance by his boredom with hypocrisy and
moral platitudes.

It was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than
of his being swept away by his love.

It was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries
about the elegance of mademoiselle de La Mole's figure, the
excellent taste of he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the
beauty of her arm, the disinvoltura of all her movements, that

A PLOT 327

he began to find himself in love. Then in order to complete
the charm he thought her a Catherine de Medicis. Nothing
was too deep or too criminal for the character which he as-
cribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the Frilairs,
and the Castanedes whom he had admired so much in his
youth. To put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris
ideal.

Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing
in the depth or in the depravity of the Parisian character ?

It is impossible that this trio is making fun of me thought
Julien. The reader knows little of his character if he has not
begun already to imagine his cold and gloomy expression when
he answered Mathilde's looks. A bitter irony rebuffed those
assurances of friendship which the astonished mademoiselle de
La Mole ventured to hazard on two or three occasions.

Piqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young
girl, though naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as
impassioned as it was naturally capable of being. But there
was also a large element of pride in Mathilde's character, and
the birth of a sentiment which made all her happiness de-
pendent on another, was accompanied by a gloomy melancholy.

Julien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in
Paris to appreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of
ennui. Instead of being keen as she had been on at-homes,
theatres, and all kinds of distractions, she now shunned them.

Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet
Julien, who always made a point of being present when the
audience came out of the Opera, noticed that she made a
point of getting taken there as often as she could. He thought
he noticed that she had lost a little of that brilliant neatness of
touch which used to be manifest in everything she did. She
would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered
positively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging
energy. He thought that she made a special butt of the
marquis de Croisenois. That young man must be desperately
in love with money not to give the go-by to that girl, however
rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for himself, indignant
at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he redoubled his
frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to answer
her with scant courtesy.

In spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of

328 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Mathilde's signs of interest, these manifestations were so
palpable on certain days, and Julien, whose eyes were be-
ginning to be opened, began to find her so pretty, that he
was sometimes embarrassed.

" These young people of society will score in the long run
by their skill and their coolness over my inexperience," he said
to himself. " I must leave and put an end to all this." The
marquis had just entrusted him with the administration of a
number of small estates and houses which he possessed in
Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de la
Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other
self, except in those matters which concerned his political
career.

" So, when we come to balance the account," Julien said to
himself, as he prepared his departure, " they have not caught
me. Whether the jests that mademoiselle de La Mole made
to those gentlemen are real, or whether they were only
intended to inspire me with confidence, they have simply
amused me.

" If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son,
mademoiselle de La Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is
quite as much an enigma for the marquis de Croisenois as she
is to me. Yesterday, for instance, her bad temper was very
real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her snub, thanks to her
favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as rich as I
am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph ;
it will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc
lains."

He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew,
even better than he did himself, that he was going to leave
Paris the following day for a long time. She developed a
maddening headache, which was rendered worse by the stuffy
salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and persecuted
Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and some
other young men who had dined at the hotel de La Mole, to
such an extent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them
to take their leave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange
way.

" Perhaps that look is a pose," thought Julien, " but how
about that hurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah,"
he said to himself, " who am I to djuge of such things ? We

A PLOT 329

are dealing with the cream of Parisian sublimity and subtlety.
As for that hurried breathing which was on the point of
affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Leontine Fay, whom
she likes so much."

They were left alone; the conversation was obviously
languishing. "No, Julien has no feeling for me," said
Mathilde to herself, in a state of real unhappiness.

As he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently.
" You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said
to him in a voice that was so changed that its tone was
scarcely recognisable.

This circumstance affected Julien immediately.
" My father," she continued, " has a proper regard for the
services you render him. You must not leave to-morrow ; find
an excuse." And she ran away.

Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a
prettier foot. She ran with a grace which fascinated Julien,
but will the reader guess what he began to think about after
she had finally left him ? He felt wounded by the imperious
tone with which she had said the words, " you must." Louis
XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated by
the words " you must," which had been tactlessly pronounced
by his first physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu.

An hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was
quite simply a declaration of love.

" The style is too affected," said Julien to himself, as he
endeavoured to control by his literary criticism the joy
which was spreading over his cheeks and forcing him to smile
in spite of himself.

At last his passionate exultation was too strong to be con-
trolled. " So I," he suddenly exclaimed, " I, the poor peasant,
get a declaration of love from a great lady."

"As for myself, I haven't done so badly," he added,
restraining his joy as much as he could. " I have managed to
preserve my self-respect. I did not say that I loved her."
He began to study the formation of the letters. Mademoiselle
de La Mole had a pretty little English handwriting. He
needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a joy
which verged on delirium.

" Your departure forces me to speak. ... I could not bear
not to see you again."

330 THE RED AND THE BLACK

A thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It
interrupted his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled
his joy. "So I score over the marquis de Croisenois," he
exclaimed. " Yes, I who could only talk seriously ! And he
is so handsome. He has a moustache and a charming
uniform. He always manages to say something witty and
clever just at the psychological moment."

Julien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering
at random in the garden, mad with happiness.

Afterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered
in to the marquis de La Mole, who was fortunately still in.
He showed him several stamped papers which had come from
Normandy, and had no difficulty in convincing him that he
was obliged to put off his departure for Languedoc in order to
look after the Normandy lawsuits.

" I am very glad that you are not going," said the marquis
to him, when they had finished talking business. " I like
seeing you." Julien went out ; the words irritated him.

" And I I am going to seduce his daughter ! and perhaps
render impossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois
to which the marquis looks forward with such delight. If he
does not get made a duke, at any rate his daughter will have
a coronet." Julien thought of leaving for Languedoc in spite
of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of the explanation he had
just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue quickly
disappeared.

" How kind it is of me," he said to himself, "me ... a plebeian,
takes pity on a family of this rank ! Yes, me, whom the duke
of Chaulnes calls a servant ! How does the marquis manage
to increase his immense fortune ? By selling stock when he
picks up information at the castle that there will be a panic
of a coup d'etat on the following day. And shall I, who
have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel
providence I, whom providence has given a noble heart but
not an income of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough
to buy bread with, literally not enough to buy bread with
shall I refuse a pleasure that presents itself? A limpid
fountain which will quench my thirst in this scorching desert
of mediocrity which I am traversing with such difficulty !
Upon my word, I am not such a fool ! Each man for himself
in that desert of egoism which is called life."

A PLOT 33I

And he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame
de La Mole, and especially her lady friends, had favoured him
with.

The pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois
completed the rout of this echo of virtue.

" How I should like to make him angry," said Julien.
"With what confidence would I give him a sword thrust
now!" And he went through the segoon thrust. "Up till
now I have been a mere usher, who exploited basely the little
courage he had. After this letter I am his equal.

" Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure,
" the merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in
the balance, and it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who
turns the scale.

" Good ! " he exclaimed, " this is how I shall sign my
answer. Don't imagine, mademoiselle de La Mole, that I am
forgetting my place. I will make you realise and fully
appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son that you are betraying
a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who followed
St. Louis to the Crusade."

Julien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to
go down into the garden. He had locked himself in his
room, but he found it too narrow to breathe in.

" To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura,"
he kept on repeating to himself, " to think of it being me who
am eternally condemned to wear this gloomy black suit ! Alas
twenty years ago I would have worn a uniform like they do !
In those days a man like me either got killed or became a
general at thirty-six. The letter which he held clenched in
his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it
is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an
income of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like
my lord bishop of Beauvais.

"Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile,
" I have more brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose
the uniform of my century. And he felt a quickening of his
ambition and of his attachment to his ecclesiastical dress.
What cardinals of even lower birth than mine have not
succeeded in governing ! My compatriot Granvelle, for
instance."

Julien's agitation became gradually calmed ! Prudence

332 THE RED AND THE BLACK

emerged to the top. He said to himself like his master
Tartufe whose part he knew by heart :

Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete.

Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux,
Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire
Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire.

Tartufe, act iv. Scene v.

"Tartufe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good
as most men .... My answer may be shown ....
and the way out of that is this," he added pronouncing his
words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and restrained
ferocity. " We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages
from the letter of the sublime Mathilde."

" Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl them-
selves upon me and snatch the original away."

" No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I
am accustomed to firing on lackeys."

"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself
upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I
kill him, or wound him, good, that's what they want. I shall
be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police
court and the judges will send me with all justice and all
equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in
Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four
hundred scoundrels .... And am I to have the
slightest pity on these people," he exclaimed getting up im-
petuously ! " Do they show any to persons of the third estate
when they have them in their power ! " With these words his
gratitude to M. de La Mole, which had been in spite of himself
torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.

" Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Macchiavellian trick,
the abbe Maslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not
have done better. You will take the provocative letter away
from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel
Caron at Colmar."

" One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a
well-sealed packet to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of. He's
an honest man, a Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible.
Yes, but he will open the letters . . . Fouque is the man
to whom I must send it."

A PLOT 333

We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his
countenance ghastly ; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It
represented the unhappy man at war with all society.

"To arms," exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the
flight of steps of the hotel with one stride. He entered the
stall of the street scrivener ; he frightened him. " Copy this,"
he said, giving him mademoiselle de La Mole's letter.

While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to
Fouque. He asked him to take care of a valuable deposit.
" But he said to himself," breaking in upon his train of
thought, " the secret service of the post-office will open my
letter, and will give you gentlemen the one you are looking
for ... . not quite, gentlemen." He went and bought
an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skilfully hid
Mathilde's letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His
parcel left by the diligence addressed to one of Fouque's
workmen, whose name was known to nobody at Paris.

This done, he returned to the h6tel de La Mole, joyous and
buoyant.

Now it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the
room and threw off his coat.

" What ! mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, " is it
mademoiselle de La Mole who gets Arsene her father's lackey
to hand an only too flattering letter to a poor carpenter from
the Jura, in order no doubt to make fun of his simplicity ? "
And he copied out the most explicit phrases in the letter
which he had just received. His own letter would have done
honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered
the Italian opera, intoxicated with happiness and that feeling
of his own power which was so novel for a poor devil like him.
He heard his friend Geronimo sing. Music had never exalted
him to such a pitch.

CHAPTER XLIV

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS

What perplexity ! What sleepless nights ! Great God.
Am I going to make myself contemptible? He will
despise me himself. But he is leaving, he is going away.

Alfred de Musset.

Mathilde had not written without a struggle. Whatever
might have been the beginning of her interest in Julien, it
soon dominated that pride which had reigned unchallenged in
her heart since she had begun to know herself. This cold
and haughty soul was swept away for the first time by a
sentiment of passion, but if this passion dominated her pride,
it still kept faithfully to the habits of that pride. Two months
of struggles and new sensations had transformed, so to speak
her whole moral life.

Mathilde thought she was in sight of happiness. This vista,
irresistible as it is for those who combine a superior intellect
with a courageous soul, had to struggle for a long time against
her self respect and all her vulgar duties. One day she went
into her mother's room at seven o'clock in the morning and
asked permission to take refuge in Villequier. The marquise
did not even deign to answer her, and advised her to go back
to bed. This was the last effort of vulgar prudence and
respect for tradition.

The fear of doing wrong and of offending those ideas which
the Caylus's, the de Luz's, the Croisenois' held for sacred had
little power over her soul. She considered such creatures
incapable of understanding her. She would have consulted
them, if it had been a matter of buying a carriage or an estate.
Her real fear was that Julien was displeased with her.

" Perhaps he, too, has only the appearance of a superior
man?"

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS 335

She abhorred lack of character ; that was her one objection
to the handsome young men who surrounded her. The more
they made elegant fun of everything which deviated from the
prevailing mode, or which conformed to it but indifferently,
the lower they fell in her eyes.

They were brave and that was all. " And after all in what
way were they brave ? " she said to herself. " In duels, but
the duel is nothing more than a formality. The whole thing
is mapped out beforehand, even the correct thing to say when
you fall. Stretched on the turf, and with your hand on your
heart, you must vouchsafe a generous forgiveness to the
adversary, and a few words for a fair lady, who is often
imaginary, or if she does exist, will go to a ball on the day of
your death for fear of arousing suspicion."

" One braves danger at the head of a squadron brilliant
with steel, but how about that danger which is solitary,
strange, unforeseen and really ugly."

" Alas," said Mathilde to herself, " it was at the court of
Henri III. that men who were great both by character and by
birth were to be found ! Yes ! If Julien had served at Jarnac
or Moncontour, I should no longer doubt. In those days of
strength and vigour Frenchmen were not dolls. The day of the
battle was almost the one which presented the fewest problems."

Their life was not imprisoned, like an Egyptian mummy
in a covering which was common to all, and always the same.
" Yes," she added, " there was more real courage in going
home alone at eleven o'clock in the evening when one came
out of the hotel de Soissons where Catherine de M^dicis
lived than there is nowadays in running over to Algiers. A
man's life was then a series of hazards. Nowadays civilisation
has banished hazard. There are no more surprises. If any-
thing new appears in any idea there are not sufficient epigrams
to immortalise it, but if anything new appears in actual life,
our panic reaches the lowest depth of cowardice. Whatever
folly panic makes us commit is excused. What a degenerate
and boring age ! What would Boniface de la Mole have
said if, lifting his cut-off head out of the tomb, he had seen
seventeen of his descendants allow themselves to be caught
like sheep in 1793 in order to be guillotined two days after-
wards ! Death was certain, but it would have been bad form
to have defended themselves and to have killed at least one or

336 THE RED AND THE BLACK

two Jacobins. Yes ! in the heroic days of France, in the age
of Boniface de La Mole, Julien would have been the chief of a
squadron, while my brother would have been the young priest
with decorous manners, with wisdom in his eyes and reason on
his lips." Some months previously Mathilde had given up all
hope of meeting any being who was a little different from the
common pattern. She had found some happiness in allowing
herself to write to some young society men. This rash pro-
cedure, which was so unbecoming and so imprudent in a young
girl, might have disgraced her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois,
the Duke de Chaulnes, his father, and the whole hotel de
Chaulnes, who on seeing the projected marriage broken off
would have wanted to know the reason. At that time
Mathilde had been unable to sleep on those days when she
had written one of her letters. But those letters were only
answers. But now she ventured to declare her own love.
She wrote first (what a terrible word !) to a man of the
lowest social grade.

This circumstance rendered her eternal disgrace quite in-
evitable in the event of detection. Who of the women who
visited her mother would have dared to take her part ? What
official excuse could be evolved which could successfully cope
with the awful contempt of society.

Besides speaking was awful enough, but writing ! " There
are some things which are not written ! " Napoleon had ex-
claimed on learning of the capitulation of Baylen. And it
was Julien who had told her that epigram, as though giving
her a lesson that was to come in useful subsequently.

But all this was comparatively unimportant, Mathilde's
anguish had other causes. Forgetting the terrible effect it
would produce on society, and the ineffable blot on her
scutcheon that would follow such an outrage on her own caste,
Mathilde was going to write to a person of a very different
character to the Croisenois', the de Luz's, the Caylus's.

She would have been frightened at the depth and mystery
in Julien's character, even if she had merely entered into
a conventional acquaintance with him. And she was going to
make him her lover, perhaps her master.

" What will his pretensions not be, if he is ever in a posi-
tion to do everything with me ? Well ! I shall say, like
Medea : Au milieu de tant de perils il me reste Moi."

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS 337

She believed that Julien had no respect for nobility of blood.
What was more, he probably did not love her.

In these last moments of awful doubt her feminine pride
suggested to her certain ideas. " Everything is bound to be
extraordinary in the life of a girl like me," exclaimed Mathilde
impatiently. The pride, which had been drilled into her since
her cradle, began to struggle with her virtue. It was at this
moment that Julien's departure precipitated everything.

(Such characters are luckily very rare.)

Very late in the evening, Julien was malicious enough to
have a very heavy trunk taken down to the porter's lodge. He
called the valet, who was courting mademoiselle de la Mole's
chambermaid, to move it. " This manoeuvre cannot result in
anything," he said to himself, " but if it does succeed, she will
think that I have gone." Very tickled by this humorous
thought, he fell asleep. Mathilde did not sleep a wink.

Julien left the hotel very early the next morning without
being seen, but he came back before eight o'clock.

He had scarcely entered the library before M. de la Mole
appeared on the threshold. He handed her his answer. He
thought that it was his duty to speak to her, it was certainly
perfectly feasible, but mademoiselle de la Mole would not
listen to him and disappeared. Julien was delighted. He
did not know what to say.

" If all this is not a put up job with comte Norbert, it is
clear that it is my cold looks which have kindled the strange
love which this aristocratic girl chooses to entertain for me.
I should be really too much of a fool if I ever allowed myself
to take a fancy to that big blonde doll." This train of reason-
ing left him colder and more calculating than he had ever
been.

" In the battle for which we are preparing," he added,
" pride of birth will be like a high hill which constitutes a
military position between her and me. That must be the
field of the manoeuvres. I made a great mistake in staying in
Paris ; this postponing of my departure cheapens and exposes
me, if all this is simply a trick. What danger was there in
leaving ? If they were making fun of me, I was making fun
of them. If her interest for me was in any way real, I was
making that interest a hundred times more intense."

Mademoiselle de la Mole's letter had given Julien's vanity

22

338 THE RED AND THE BLACK

so keen a pleasure, that wreathed as he was in smiles at his
good fortune he had forgotten to think seriously about the
propriety of leaving.

It was one of the fatal elements of his character to be
extremely sensitive to his own weaknesses. He was extremely
upset by this one, and had almost forgotten the incredible
victory which had preceded this slight check, when about
nine o'clock mademoiselle de la Mole appeared on the thres-
hold of the library, flung him a letter and ran away.

" So this is going to be the romance by letters," he said
as he picked it up. " The enemy makes a false move ; I will
reply by coldness and virtue."

He was asked with a poignancy which merely increased his
inner gaiety to give a definite answer. He indulged in the
pleasure of mystifying those persons who he thought wanted
to make fun of him for two pages, and it was out of humour
again that he announced towards the end of his answer his
definite departure on the following morning.

11 The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter,"
he thought after he had finished it, and he went there. He
looked at the window of mademoiselle de la Mole's room.

It was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment,
but there was a large ground floor.

This latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the
avenue of pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be
seen from mademoiselle de la Mole's window. The dome
formed by the well clipped pines intercepted the view.
" What !" said Julien to himself angrily, " another indiscretion !
If they have really begun making fun of me, showing myself
with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands."

Norbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien
came out from under the dome formed by the clipped branches
of the pine, the comte and his friend could follow all his
movements.

Mademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window ; he
half showed his letter ; she lowered her head, then Julien ran
up to his own room and met accidently on the main staircase
the fair Mathilde, who seized the letter with complete self-
possession and smiling eyes.

" What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame
de Renal," said Julien to himself, " when she ventured to

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS 339

receive a letter from me, even after six months of intimate
relationship ! I don't think she ever looked at me with
smiling eyes in her whole life."

He did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer ;
was he perhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which
were actuating him ?

" But how different too," he went on to think, " are her
elegant morning dress and her distinguished appearance ! A
man of taste on seeing mademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off
would infer the position which she occupies in society.
That is what can be called a specific merit."

In spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite
honest with himself; rnadame de Renal had no marquis de
Croisenois to sacrifice to him. His only rival was that
grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who assumed the name of
Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in France.

At five o'clock Julien received a third letter. It was thrown
to him from the library door. Mademoiselle de la Mole ran
away again. " What a mania for writing," he said to himself
with a laugh, " when one can talk so easily. The enemy
wants my letters, that is clear, and many of them." He did not
hurry to open this one. " More elegant phrases," he thought ;
but he paled as he read it. There were only eight lines.

" I need to speak to you ; I must speak to you this evening.
Be in the garden at the moment when one o'clock is striking.
Take the big gardeners' ladder near the well ; place it against
my window, and climb up to my room. It is moonlight ;
never mind."

CHAPTER XLV

IS IT A PLOT ?

Oh, how cruel is the interval between the conception
and the execution of a great project. What vain fears,
what fits of irresolution ! It is a matter of life and
death even more is at stake honour ! Schiller.

" This is getting serious," thought Julien, " and a little too
clear," he added after thinking a little. " Why to be sure !
This fine young lady can talk to me in the library with a free-
dom which, thank heaven, is absolutely complete ; the marquis,
frightened as he is that I show him accounts, never sets foot in
it. Why ! M. de la Mole and the comte Norbert, the only
persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the whole day,
and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince would
not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable
indiscretion.

" It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun
of me. First they wanted to ruin me by my own letters ; they
happen to be discreet ; well, they want some act which is
clearer than daylight. These handsome little gentlemen think
I am too silly or too conceited. The devil ! To think of climb-
ing like this up a ladder to a storey twenty-five feet high in the
finest moonlight. They would have time to see me, even from
the neighbouring houses. I shall cut a pretty figure to be sure
on my ladder ! " Julien went up to his room again and began
to pack his trunk whistling. He had decided to leave and not
even to answer.

But this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind.
" If by chance," he suddenly said to himself after he had
closed his trunk, " Mathilde is in good faith, why then I
cut the figure of an arrant coward in her eyes. I have

IS IT A PLOT? 341

no birth myself, so I need great qualities attested straight
away by speaking actions money down no charitable
credit."

He spent a quarter-of-an-hour in reflecting. " What is the
good of denying it ? " he said at last. " She will think me a
coward. I shall lose not only the most brilliant person in
high society, as they all said at M. the duke de Retz's ball, but
also the heavenly pleasure of seeing the marquis de Croisenois,
the son of a duke, who will be one day a duke himself, sacrificed
to me. A charming young man who has all the qualities I
lack. A happy wit, birth, fortune

" This regret will haunt me all my life, not on her account,
' there are so many mistresses ! . . . but there is only one
honour ! ' says old don Diego. And here am I clearly
and palpably shrinking from the first danger that presents
itself; for the duel with M. de Beauvoisis was simply a joke.
This is quite different. A servant may fire at me point blank,
but that is the least danger ; I may be disgraced.

" This is getting serious, my boy," he added with a Gascon
gaiety and accent. " Honour is at stake. A poor devil flung
by chance into as low a grade as I am will never find such an
opportunity again. I shall have my conquests, but they will
be inferior ones "

He reflected for a long time, he walked up and down
hurriedly, and then from time to time would suddenly stop.
A magnificent marble bust of cardinal de Richelieu had been
placed in his room. It attracted his gaze in spite of himself.
This bust seemed to look at him severely as though reproach-
ing him with the lack of that audacity which ought to be so
natural to the French character. "-Would I have hesitated in
your age great man ? "

" At the worst," said Julien to himself, " suppose all this is
a trap, it is pretty black and pretty compromising for a young
girl. They know that I am not the man to hold my tongue.
They will therefore have to kill me. That was right enough
in 1574 in the days of Boniface de la Mole, but nobody to-
day would ever have the pluck. They are not the same men.
Mademoiselle de la Mole is the object of so much jealousy.
Four hundred salons would ring with her disgrace to-morrow,
and how pleased they would all be.

" The servants gossip among themselves about marked the

342 THE RED AND THE BLACK

favours of which I am the recipient. I know it, I have heard
them

" On the other hand they're her letters. They may think
that I have them on me. They may surprise me in her room
and take them from me. I shall have to deal with two, three,
or four men. How can I tell ? But where are they going to
find these men ? Where are they to find discreet subordinates

in Paris ? Justice frightens them By God ! It may

be the Caylus's, the Croisenois', the de Luz's themselves.
The idea of the ludicrous figure I should cut in the middle of
them at the particular minute may have attracted them.
Look out for the fate of Abailard, M. the secretary.

11 Well, by heaven, I'll mark you. I'll strike at your faces
like Caesar's soldiers at Pharsalia. As for the letters, I can
put them in a safe place."

Julien copied out the two last, hid them in a fine volume of
Voltaire in the library and himself took the originals to the
post.

" What folly am I going to rush into," he said to himself
with surprise and terror when he returned. He had been a
quarter of an hour without contemplating what he was to do
on this coming night.

" But if I refuse, I am bound to despise myself afterwards.
This matter will always occasion me great doubt during my
whole life, and to a man like me such doubts are the most
poignant unhappiness. Did I not feel like that for Amanda's
lover ! I think I would find it easier to forgive myself for a
perfectly clear crime ; once admitted, I could leave off thinking
of it.

" Why ! I shall have been the rival of a man who bears one
of the finest names in France, and then out of pure light-
heartedness, declared myself his inferior ! After all, it is
cowardly not to go ; these words clinch everything," exclaimed
Julien as he got up ... " besides she is quite pretty."

" If this is not a piece of treachery, what a folly is she not
committing for my sake. If it's a piece of mystification, by
heaven, gentlemen, it only depends on me to turn the jest
into earnest and that I will do.

" But supposing they tie my hands together at the moment
I enter the room : they may have placed some ingenious
machine there.

IS IT A PLOT? 343

" It's like a duel," he said to himself with a laugh. " Every-
one makes a full parade, says my niatre tTarmes, but the
good God, who wishes the thing to end, makes one of them
forget to parry. Besides, here's something to answer them
with." He drew his pistols out of his pocket, and although
the priming was shining, he renewed it.

There was still several hours to wait. Julien wrote to
Fouque in order to have something to do. " My friend, do
not open the enclosed letter except in the event of an
accident, if you hear that something strange has happened to
me. In that case blot out the proper names in the manuscript
which I am sending you, make eight copies of it, and send it
to the papers of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Brussels, etc.
Ten days later have the manuscript printed, send the first
copy to M. the marquis de la Mole, and a fortnight after that
throw the other copies at night into the streets of Verrieres.

Julien made this little memoir in defence of his position
as little compromising as possible for mademoiselle de la
Mole. Fouque was only to open it in the event of an
accident. It was put in the form of a story, but in fact it
exactly described his situation.

Julien had just fastened his packet when the dinner bell
rang. It made his heart beat. His imagination was distracted
by the story which he had just composed, and fell a prey to
tragic presentiments. He saw himself seized by servants,
trussed, and taken into a cellar with a gag in his mouth. A
servant was stationed there, who never let him out of sight,
and if the family honour required that the adventure should
have a tragic end, it was easy to finish everything with those
poisons which leave no trace. They could then say that he
had died of an illness and would carry his dead body back into
his room.

Thrilled like a dramatic author by his own story, Julien
was really afraid when he entered the dining-room. He
looked at all those liveried servants he studied their faces.
"Which ones are chosen for to-night's expedition?" he said
to himself. "The memories of the court of Henri III. are so
vivid in this family, and so often recalled, that if they think
they have been insulted they will show more resolution than
other persons of the same rank." He looked at mademoiselle
de la Mole in order to read the family plans in her eyes ; she

344 THE RED AND THE BLACK

was pale and looked quite middle-aged. He thought that she
had never looked so great : she was really handsome and
imposing ; he almost fell in love with her. " Pallida morte
futura? he said to himself (her pallor indicates her great
plans). It was in vain that after dinner he made a point of
walking for a long time in the garden, mademoiselle did not
appear. Speaking to her at that moment would have lifted a
great weight off his heart.

Why not admit it ? he was afraid. As he had resolved to
act, he was not ashamed to abandon himself to this emotion.
"So long as I show the necessary courage at the actual
moment," he said to himself, " what does it matter what I
feel at this particular moment ? " He went to reconnoitre the
situation and find out the weight of the ladder.

"This is an instrument," he said to himself with a smile,
" which I am fated to use both here and at Verrieres. What
a difference ! In those days," he added with a sigh, " I was
not obliged to distrust the person for whom I exposed myself
to danger. What a difference also in the danger ! "

"There would have been no dishonour for me if I had
been killed in M. de Renal's gardens. It would have been
easy to have made my death into a mystery. But here all
kinds of abominable scandal will be talked in the salons of
the hotel de Chaulnes, the hotel de Caylus, de Retz, etc.,
everywhere in fact. I shall go down to posterity as a monster."
" For two or three years," he went on with a laugh, making
fun of himself; but the idea paralysed him. " And how am
I going to manage to get justified ? Suppose that Fouque
does print my posthumous pamphlet, it will only be taken for
an additional infamy. Why ! I get received into a house, and
I reward the hospitality which I have received, the kindness
with which I have been loaded by printing a pamphlet about
what has happened and attacking the honour of women !
Nay ! I'd a thousand times rather be duped."
The evening was awful.

CHAPTER XLVI

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

This garden was very big, it had been planned a few years ago in
perfect taste. But the trees were more than a century old. It
had a certain rustic atmosphere. Massinger.

He was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque
when eleven o'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of
the door of his room as though he had locked himself in.
He went with a sleuth-like step to observe what was happen-
ing over the house, especially on the fourth storey where
the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of
madame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertain-
ment, the servants were taking punch with much gaiety.
"Those who laugh like that," thought Julien, "cannot be
participating in the nocturnal expedition ; if they were, they
would be more serious."

Eventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the
garden. " If their plan is to hide themselves from the
servants of the house, they will despatch the persons whom they
have told off to surprise me over the garden wall.

" If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this
matter, he is bound to find it less compromising for the young
person, whom he wishes to make his wife if he has me
surprised before I enter her room."

He made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance.
" My honour is at stake," he thought. " If I tumble into
some pitfall it will not be an excuse in my own eyes to say,
* I never thought of it.' "

The weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock
the moon rose, at half-past twelve it completely illuminated
the facade of the hotel looking out upon the garden.

346 THE RED AND THE BLACK

"She is mad," Julien said to himself. As one o'clock
struck there was still a light in comte Norbert's windows.
Julien had never been so frightened in his life, he only saw
the dangers of the enterprise and had no enthusiasm at all.
He went and took the immense ladder, waited five minutes to
give her time to tell him not to go, and five minutes after one
placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He mounted
softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As
he approached the window it opened noiselessly.

" So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with
considerable emotion. " I have been following your move-
ments for the last hour."

Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how
to conduct himself. He did not feel at all in love. He
thought in his embarrassment that he ought to be venture-
some. He tried to kiss Mathilde.

" For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.

Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look
round him. The moon was so brilliant that the shadows
which it made in mademoiselle de la Mole's room were black.
" It's quite possible for men to be concealed without my seeing
them," be thought.

" What have you got in your pocket at the side of your
coat ? " Mathilde said to him, delighted at finding something
to talk about. She was suffering strangely; all those
sentiments of reserve and timidity which were so natural to a
girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion and were
torturing her.

" I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien
equally glad at having something to say.

" You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.

" It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon
down below or the room on the ground floor."

"You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde
making a vain effort to assume an ordinary conversational
tone ; "it seems to me you can lower the ladder by tying a
cord to the first rung. I have always a supply of cords at
hand."

"So this is a woman in love," thought Julien. "She
actually dares to say that she is in love. So much self-
possession and such shrewdness in taking precautions are

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING 347

sufficient indications that I am not triumphing over M. de
Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply
succeeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to
me ? Do I love her ? I am triumphing over the marquis in
so far as he would be very angry at having a successor, and
angrier still at that successor being myself. How haughtily
he looked at me this evening in the Cafe Tortoni when he
pretended not to recognise me ! And how maliciously he
bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."

Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He
lowered it softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to
avoid its touching the window pane. " A fine opportunity to
kill me," he thought, " if anyone is hidden in Mathilde's
room ; " but a profound silence continued to reign everywhere.
The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in
laying it on the border of the exotic flowers along side the
wall.

" What will my mother say," said Mathilde, " when she
sees her beautiful plants all crushed ? You must throw down
the cord," she added with great self-possession. "If it were
noticed going up to the balcony, it would be a difficult
circumstance to explain."

" And how am I to get away ? " said Julien in a jesting
tone affecting the Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids
of the household had been born in Saint-Domingo.)

"You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde,
delighted at the idea.

" Ah ! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.
Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden ; Mathilde
grasped his arm. He thought he had been seized by an
enemy and turned round sharply, drawing a dagger. She had
thought that she had heard a window opening. They
remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight
lit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was
no more cause for anxiety.

Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on
both sides. Julien assured himself that the door was
completely locked ; he thought of looking under the bed, but
he did not dare ; " they might have stationed one or two
lackeys there." Finally he feared that he might reproach
himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did look.

348 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most
extreme timidity. She was horrified at her position.

" What have you done with my letters ? " she said at last.

" What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they
are eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought
Julien.

" The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's
diligence is taking far away from here."

He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as
to be heard by any persons who might be concealed in two
large mahogany cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.

"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same
destination as the first."

" Heavens, why all these precautions ? " said Mathilde in
alarm.

" What is the good of my lying ? " thought Julien, and he
confessed all his suspicions.

11 So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear,"
exclaimed Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of
tenderness.

Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made
him lose his head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He
dared to clasp in his arms that beautiful girl who inspired him
with such respect. He was only partially rebuffed. He fell
back on his memory as he had once at Besancon with
Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest
phrases out of the Nouvelle Heloise.

" You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made
without listening too attentively to his phrases ; " I wanted to
test your courage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your
resolutions show you even more intrepid, dear, than I had
believed."

Mathilde had to make an effort to call him " dear," and was
evidently paying more attention to this strange method of
speech than to the substance of what she was saying. Being
called " dear " without any tenderness in the tone afforded no
pleasure to Julien ; he was astonished at not being happy, and
eventually fell back on his reasoning in order to be so. He
saw that he was respected by this proud young girl who never
gave undeserved praise ; by means of this reasoning he
managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity.

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING 349

It was not, it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had
sometimes found with madame de Renal. There was no
element of tenderness in the feelings of these first few minutes.
It was the keen happiness of a gratified ambition, and Julien
was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of the people
whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had
devised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of
exploiting his victory.

Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed
by the steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to
find a topic of conversation. They talked of how they were
to see each other again. Julien extracted a delicious joy from
the consciousness of the intelligence and the courage, of
which he again proved himself possessed during this discussion.
They had to reckon with extremely sharp people, the little
Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and himself as well
had their share of cleverness.

What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make
all arrangements ?

" I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien,
" without rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la
Mole's own room." It was absolutely necessary to go through
it in order to reach her daughter's room. If Mathilde thought
it preferable for him always to come by a ladder, then he
would expose himself to that paltry danger with a heart
intoxicated with joy.

As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by
this air of triumph. "So he is my master," she said to
herself, she was already a prey to remorse. Her reason was
horrified at the signal folly which she had just committed. If
she had had the power she would have annihilated both
herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed
by sheer will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was
rendered very unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame.
She had quite failed to foresee the awful plight in which she
now found herself.

" I must speak to him, however," she said at last. " That is
the proper thing to do. One does talk to one's lover. And
then with a view of accomplishing a duty, and with a
tenderness which was manifested rather in the words which
she employed than in the inflection of her voice, she recounted

350 THE RED AND THE BLACK

various resolutions which she had made concerning him
during the last few days.

She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room
by the help of the gardener's ladder according to his instruc-
tions, she would be entirely his. But never were such tender
passages spoken in a more polite and frigid tone. Up to the
present this assignation had been icy. It was enough to make
one hate the name of love. What a lesson in morality for a
young and imprudent girl ! Is it worth while to ruin one's
future for moments such as this ?

After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer
might have mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate
(so great is the difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in
yielding even to so firm a will as hers) Mathilde became
eventually a charming mistress.

In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial.
Passionate love was still more the model which they imitated
than a real actuality.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty
towards herself and towards her lover. " The poor boy," she
said to herself, " has shewn a consummate bravery. He
deserves to be happy or it is really I who will be shewing a
lack of character." But she would have been glad to have
redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found herself even
at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.

In spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she
was completely mistress of her words.

No regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien
found extraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens ! what
a difference to his last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres.
These fine Paris manners manage to spoil everything, even
love, he said to himself, quite unjustly.

He abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood
upright in one of the great mahogany cupboards into which
he had been put at the sign of the first sounds of movement
in the -neighbouring apartment, which was madame de la
Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants
soon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they
came back to finish their work.

He mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary
spots in one of the forests near Paris. He was more

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING 351

astonished than happy. The happiness which filled his soul
from time to time resembled that of a young sub-lieutenant
who as the result of some surprising feat has just been made
a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt
himself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which
was above him the day before was now on a level with
him or even below him. Little by little Julien's happiness
increased in proportion as he got further away from Paris.

If there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that,
however strange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in
everything she had done, simply accomplished a duty. The
only thing she had not foreseen in all the events of that night,
was the shame and unhappiness which she had experienced
instead of that absolute felicity which is found in novels.

"Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with
him ? " she said to herself

CHAPTER XLVII

AN OLD SWORD

I now mean to be serious ; it is time

Since laughter now-a-diiys is deemed too serious.

A jest at vice by virtue s called a crime.

Don Juan, c. xiii.

She did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into
the salon in the evening, but did not look at Julien. He
considered this behaviour strange, " but," he thought, " I do
not know their usages. She will give me some good reason
for all this." None the less he was a prey to the most
extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's
features; he was bound to own to himself that she looked
cold and malicious. It was evidently not the same woman
who on the proceeding night had had, or pretended to have,
transports of happiness which were too extravagant to be
genuine.

The day after, and the subsequent day she showed the
same coldness ; she did not look at him, she did not notice
his existence. Julien was devoured by the keenest anxiety
and was a thousand leagues removed from that feeling of
triumph which had been his only emotion on the first day.
"Can it be by chance," he said to himself, "a return to
virtue?" But this was a very bourgeois word to apply to
the haughty Mathilde.

" Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve
in religion," thought Julien, " she only likes it in so far as it is
very useful to the interests of her class."

But perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly
reproaching herself for the mistake which she has committed.
Julien believed that he was her first lover.

AN OLD SWORD 353

" But," he said to himself at other moments, " I must admit
that there is no trace of naivety, simplicity, or tenderness in
her own demeanour; I have never seen her more haughty,
can she despise me ? It would be worthy of her to reproach
herself simply because of my low birth, for what she has done
for me."

While Julien, full of those preconceived ideas which he had
found in books and in his memories of Verrieres, was chasing
the phantom of a tender mistress, who from the minute when
she has made her lover happy no longer thinks of her own
existence, Mathilde's vanity was infuriated against him.

As for the last two months she had no longer been bored,
she was not frightened of boredom; consequently, without
being able to have the slightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost
his greatest advantage.

" I have given myself a master," said mademoiselle de la
Mole to herself, a prey to the blackest sorrow. " Luckily
he is honour itself, but if I offend his vanity, he will revenge
himself by making known the nature of our relations."
Mathilde had never had a lover, and though passing through
a stage of life which affords some tender illusions even to the
coldest souls, she fell a prey to the most bitter reflections.

" He has an immense dominion over me since his reign is
one of terror, and he is capable, if I provoke him, of punishing
me with an awful penalty." This idea alone was enough to
induce mademoiselle de la Mole to insult him. Courage was
the primary quality in her character. The only thing which
could give her any thrill and cure her from a fundamental and
chronically recurring ennui was the idea that she was staking
her entire existence on a single throw.

As mademoiselle de la Mole obstinately refused to look at
him, Julien on the third day in spite of her evident objection,
followed her into the billiard-room after dinner.

" Well, sir, you think you have acquired some very strong
rights over me ? " she said to him with scarcely controlled
anger, " since you venture to speak to me, in spite of my very
clearly manifested wish ? Do you know that no one in the
world has had such effrontery ? "

The dialogue of these two lovers was incomparably
humourous. Without suspecting it, they were animated by
mutual sentiments of the most vivid hate. As neither the

23

354 THE RED AND THE BLACK

one nor the other had a meekly patient character, while they
were both disciples of good form, they soon came to informing
each other quite clearly that they would break for ever.

" I swear eternal secrecy to you," said Julien. " I should
like to add that I would never address a single word to you,
were it not that a marked change might perhaps jeopardise
your reputation." He saluted respectfully and left.

He accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a
duty; he was very far from thinking himself much in love
with mademoiselle de la Mole. He had certainly not loved
her three days before, when he had been hidden in the big
mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found himself
estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete
and rapid change.

His memory tortured him by going over the least details in
that night, which had as a matter of fact left him so cold.
In the very night that followed this announcement of a final
rupture, Julien almost went mad at being obliged to own to
himself that he loved mademoiselle de la Mole.

This discovery was followed by awful struggles : all his
emotions were overwhelmed.

Two days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de
Croisenois, he could have almost burst out into tears and
embraced him.

His habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of common-
sense, he decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk
and went to the post.

He felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the
mails, he was told that by a singular chance there was a place
in the Toulouse mail. He booked it and returned to the
hotel de la Mole to announce his departure to the marquis.

M. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive
Julien went into the library to wait for him. What was his
emotion when he found mademoiselle de la Mole there.

As she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression
which it was impossible to mistake.

In his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and
was weak enough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt
tenderness. " So you love me no more."

" I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who
came along," said Mathilde crying with rage against herself.

AN OLD SWORD 355

" The first man who came along," cried Julien, and he
made for an old mediaeval sword which was kept in the
library as a curiosity.

His grief which he thought was at its maximum at the
moment when he had spoken mademoiselle de la Mole had
been rendered a hundred times more intense by the tears of
shame which he saw her shedding.

He would have been the happiest of men if he had been
able to kill her.

When he was on the point of drawing the sword with some
difficulty from its ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy
by so novel a sensation, advanced proudly towards him, her
tears were dry.

The thought of his benefactor the marquis de la Mole
presented itself vividly to Julien. " Shall I kill his daughter ? "
he said to himself, " how horrible." He made a movement
to throw down the sword. " She will certainly," he thought,
" burst out laughing at the sight of such a melodramatic pose : "
that idea was responsible for his regaining all his self-possession.
He looked curiously at the blade of the old sword as though
he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it back in
the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on
the gilt bronze nail from which it hung.

The whole manoeuvre, which towards the end was very slow,
lasted quite a minute ; mademoiselle de la Mole looked at
him in astonishment. " So I have been on the verge of being
killed by my lover," she said to herself.

This idea transported her into the palmiest days of the age
of Charles IX. and of Henri III.

She stood motionless before Julien, who had just replaced
the sword ; she looked at him with eyes whose hatred had
disappeared. It must be owned that she was very fascinating
at this moment, certainly no woman looked less like a
Parisian doll (this expression symbolised Julien's great ob-
jection to the women of this city).

" I shall relapse into some weakness for him," thought
Mathilde ; " it is quite likely that he will think himself my lord
and master after a relapse like that at the very moment that I
have been talking to him so firmly." She ran away.

" By heaven, she is pretty said julien as he watched her run
and that's the creature who threw herself into my arms with so

356 THE RED AND THE BLACK

much passion scarcely a week ago . . . and to think that
those moments will never come back ? And that it's my fault,
to think of my being lacking in appreciation at the very
moment when I was doing something so exrraordinarily
interesting ! I must own that I was born with a very dull
and unfortunate character."

The marquis appeared ; Julien hastened to announce his
departure.

11 Where to ? " said M. de la Mole.

" For Languedoc."

" No, if you please, you are reserved for higher destinies.
If you leave it will be for the North. ... In military
phraseology I actually confine you in the hotel. You will
compel me to be never more than two or three hours away.
I may have need of you at any moment."

Julien bowed and retired without a word, leaving the marquis
in a state of great astonishment. He was incapable of speaking.
He shut himself up in his room. He was there free to
exaggerate to himself all the awfulness of his fate.

"So," he thought, "I cannot even get away. God knows
how many days the marquis will keep me in Paris. Great
God, what will become of me, and not a friend whom I can
consult ? The abbe Pirard will never let me finish my first
sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose enlisting me
in some conspiracy. And yet I am mad ; I feel it, I am mad.
Who will be able to guide me, what will become of me ? "

CHAPTER XLVIII

CRUEL MOMENTS

And she confesses it to me ! She goes into even the
smallest details ! Her beautiful eyes fixed on mine, and
describes the love which she felt for another. Schiller.

The delighted mademoiselle de la Mole thought of nothing
but the happiness of having been nearly killed. She went so
far as to say to herself, " he is worthy of being my master since
he was on the point of killing me. How many handsome
young society men would have to be melted together before
they were capable of so passionate a transport."

" I must admit that he was very handsome at the time
when he climbed up on the chair to replace the sword in the
same picturesque position in which the decorator hung it !
After all it was not so foolish of me to love him."

If at that moment some honourable means of reconcilia-
tion had presented itself, she would have embraced it with
pleasure. Julien locked in his room was a prey to the most
violent despair. He thought in his madness of throwing
himself at her feet. If instead of hiding himself in an out of
the way place, he had wandered about the garden of the hotel
so as to keep within reach of any opportunity, he would
perhaps have changed in a single moment his awful unhappi-
ness into the keenest happiness.

But the tact for whose lack we are now reproaching him
would have been incompatible with that sublime seizure of
the sword, which at the present time rendered him so handsome
in the eyes of mademoiselle de la Mole. This whim in
Julien's favour lasted the whole day; Mathilde conjured up
a charming image of the short moments during which she had
loved him : she regretted them.

358 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" As a matter of fact," she said to herself, " my passion for this
poor boy can from his point of view only have lasted from one
hour after midnight when I saw him arrive by his ladder with
all his pistols in his coat pocket, till eight o'clock in the
morning. It was a quarter of an hour after that as I listened
to mass at Sainte-Valere that I began to think that he might
very well try to terrify me into obedience."

After dinner mademoiselle de la Mole, so far from avoiding
Julien, spoke to him and made him promise to follow her into
the garden. He obeyed. It was a new experience.

Without suspecting it Mathilde was yielding to the love
which she was now feeling for him again. She found an
extreme pleasure in walking by his side, and she looked
curiously at those hands which had seized the sword to kill her
that very morning.

After such an action, after all that had taken place, some of
the former conversation was out of the question.

Mathilde gradually began to talk confidentially to him about
the state of her heart. She found a singular pleasure in this
kind of conversation, she even went so far as to describe to
him the fleeting moments of enthusiasm which she had

experienced for M. de Croisenois, for M. de Caylus

" What ! M. de Caylus as well ! " exclaimed Julien, and all
the jealousy of a discarded lover burst out in those words,
Mathilde thought as much, but did not feel at all insulted.

She continued torturing Julien by describing her former
sentiments with the most picturesque detail and the accent of
the most intimate truth. He saw that she was portraying what
she had in her mind's eye. He had the pain of noticing that
as she spoke she made new discoveries in her own heart.
The unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.
It is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there
is no doubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in
detail the love which rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of
anguish.

Oh, how great a punishment was there now for those
impulses of pride which had induced Julien to place himself as
superior to the Caylus and the Croisenois ! How deeply did
he feel his own unhappiness as he exaggerated to himself their
most petty advantages. With what hearty good faith he
despised himself.

CRUEL MOMENTS 359

Mathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to
express his excessive admiration. As he walked beside her he
looked surreptitiously at her hands, her arms, her queenly
bearing. He was so completely overcome by love and un-
happiness as to be on the point of falling at her feet and crying
" pity."

" Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior
to everything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love
M. de Caylus."

Julien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's
sincerity, the accent of truth was only too palpable in every-
thing she said. In order that nothing might be wanting to
complete his unhappiness there were moments when, as a result
of thinking about the sentiments which she had once
experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of him,
as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly
put an inflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished
it clearly.

He would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled
inside with molten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of
unhappiness how could the poor boy have guessed that it was
simply because she was talking to him, that mademoiselle de
la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling those weaknesses
of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de Caylus
or M. de Luz.

Words fail to express J ulien's anguish. He listened to these
detailed confidences of the love she had experienced for others
in that very avenue of pines where he had waited so few days
ago for one o'clock to strike that he might invade her room.
No human being can undergo a greater degree of unhappiness.

This kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days.
Mathilde sometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking
to him and sometimes not to avoid them ; and the one topic of
conversation to which they both seemed to revert with a kind
of cruel pleasure, was the description of the sentiments she had
felt for others. She told him about the letters which she had
written, she remembered their very words, she recited whole
sentences by heart.

She seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien
with a kind of malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in
his pangs.

360 THE RED AND THE BLACK

One sees that Julien had no experience of life ; he had not
even read any novels. If he had been a little less awkward and
he had coolly said to the young girl, whom he adored so much
and who had been giving him such strange confidences :
" admit that though I am not worth as much as all these
gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved," she
would perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed ; at
any rate success would have entirely depended on the grace
with which Julien had expressed the idea, and on the moment
which he had chosen to do so. In any case he would have
extricated himself well and advantageously from a situation
which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.

" And you love me no longer, me, who adore you ! " said
Julien to her one day, overcome by love and unhappiness.
This piece of folly was perhaps the greatest which he could have
committed. These words immediately destroyed all the
pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in talking to
him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be
surprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence
at what she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine
at the very moment when he made that foolish remark that
perhaps he did not love her any more. " His pride has doubt-
less extinguished his love," she was saying to herself. " He is
not the man to sit still and see people like Caylus, de Luz,
Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to him.
No, I shall never see him at my feet again."

Julien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during
the previous days praised sinctrely the brilliant qualities of
these gentlemen ; he would even go so far as to exaggerate
them. This nuance had not escaped mademoiselle de la
Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess its reason.
Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought was
loved, was sympathising with his happiness.

These frank but stupid words changed everything in a single
moment ; confident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him
utterly.

She was walking with him when he made his ill-timed
remark ; she left him, and her parting look expressed the most
awful contempt. She returned to the salon and did not look
at him again during the whole evening. This contempt
monopolised her mind the following day. The impulse which

CRUEL MOMENTS 361

during the last week had made her find so much pleasure in
treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the
question ; the very sight of him was disagreeable. The
sensation Mathilde felt reached the point of disgust ; nothing
can express the extreme contempt which she experienced when
her eyes fell upon him.

Julien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's
heart during the last week, but he distinguished the contempt.
He had the good sense only to appear before her on the rarest
possible occasions, and never looked at her.

But it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were,
deprived himself of her presence. He thought he felt his un-
happiness increasing still further. " The courage of a man's
heart cannot be carried further," he said to himself. He passed
his life seated at a little window at the top of the hotel ; the
blind was carefully closed, and from here at anyrate he could
see mademoiselle de la Mole when she appeared in the garden.

What were his emotions when he saw her walking after
dinner with M. de Caylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom
she had confessed to him some former amorous weakness !

Julien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense ;
he was on the point of shouting out. This firm soul was at
last completely overwhelmed.

Thinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la
Mole had become odious to him ; he became incapable of
writing the simplest letters.

" You are mad," the marquis said to him.

Julien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked
about illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately
for him the marquis rallied him at dinner about his next
journey; Mathilde understood that it might be a very long
one. It was now several days that Julien had avoided her,
and the brilliant young men who had all that this pale sombre
being she had once loved was lacking, had no longer the
power of drawing her out of her reverie.

,c An ordinary girl," she said to herself, " would have sought
out the man she preferred among those young people who are
the cynosure of a salon ; but one of the characteristics of
genius is not to drive its thoughts over the rut traced by the
vulgar.

" Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who

362 THE RED AND THE BLACK

only lacks the fortune that I possess, I should be continually
exciting attention, I should not pass through life unnoticed.
Far from incessantly fearing a revolution like my cousins who
are so frightened of the people that they have not the pluck to
scold a postillion who drives them badly, I should be certain
of playing a role and a great role, for the man whom I have
chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does
he lack? Friends, money? I will give them him." But she
treated Julien in her thought as an inferior being whose love
one could win whenever one wanted.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE OPERA BOUFFE

How the spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day,
Whicli now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away. Shakespeare.

Engrossed by thoughts of her future and the singular role
which she hoped to play, Mathilde soon came to miss the
dry metaphysical conversations which she had often had with
Julien. Fatigued by these lofty thoughts she would sometimes
also miss those moments of happiness which she had found by
his side ; these last memories were not unattended by remorse
which at certain times even overwhelmed her.

" But one may have a weakness," she said to herself, " a girl
like I am should only forget herself for a man of real merit ;
they will not say that it is his pretty moustache or his skill in
horsemanship which have fascinated me, but rather his deep
discussions on the future of France and his ideas on the an-
alogy between the events which are going to burst upon us
and the English revolution of 1688."

" I have been seduced," she answered in her remorse. " I am
a weak woman, but at least I have not been led astray like a
doll by exterior advantages."

" If there is a revolution why should not Julien Sorel play
the role of Roland and I the r61e of Madame Roland? I
prefer that part to Madame de Stael's ; the immorality of my
conduct will constitute an obstacle in this age of ours. I will
certainly not let them reproach me with an act of weakness ;
I should die of shame."

Mathilde's reveries were not all as grave, one must admit,
as the thoughts which we have just transcribed

364 THE RED AND THE BLACK

She would look at Julien and find a charming grace in hi
slightest action.

" I have doubtless," she would say, " succeeded in destroy-
ing in him the very faintest idea he had of any one else's
rights."

" The air of unhappiness and deep passion with which the
poor boy declared his love to me eight days ago proves it ; I
must own it was very extraordinary of me to manifest anger
at words in which there shone so much respect and so much of
passion. Ami not his real wife ? Those words of his were quite
natural, and I must admit, were really very nice. Julien still
continued to love me, even after those eternal conversations
in which I had only spoken to him (cruelly enough I admit),
about those weaknesses of love which the boredom of the life
I lead had inspired me for those young society men of whom
he is so jealous. Ah, if he only knew what little danger I
have to fear from them ; how withered and stereotyped they
seem to me in comparison with him."

While indulging in these reflections Mathilde made a random
pencil sketch of a profile on a page of her album. One of the
profiles she had just finished surprised and delighted her. It
had a striking resemblance to Julien. " It is the voice of
heaven. That's one of the miracles of love," she cried
ecstatically ; " Without suspecting it, I have drawn his
portrait."

She fled to her room, shut herself up in it, and with much
application made strenuous endeavours to draw Julien's
portrait, but she was unable to succeed ; the profile she had
traced at random still remained the most like him. Mathilde
was delighted with it. She saw in it a palpable proof of the
grand passion.

She only left her album very late when the marquise had
her called to go to the Italian Opera. Her one idea was to
catch sight of Julien, so that she might get her mother to
request him to keep them company.

He did not appear, and the ladies had only ordinary vulgar
creatures in their box. During the first act of the opera,
Mathilde dreamt of the man she loved with all the ecstasies of
the most vivid passion ; but a love-maxim in the second act
sung it must be owned to a melody worthy of Cimarosa
pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera said "You must

THE OPERA BOUFFE 365

punish me for the excessive adoration which I feel for him.
I love him too much."

From the moment that Mathilde heard this sublime song
everything in the world ceased to exist. She was spoken to,
she did not answer ; her mother reprimanded her, she could
scarcely bring herself to look at her. Her ecstasy reached a
state of" exultation and passion analogous to the most violent
transports which Julien had felt for her for some days. The
divinely graceful melody to which the maxim, which seemed
to have such a striking application to her own position, was
sung, engrossed all the minutes when she was not actually
thinking of Julien. Thanks to her love for music she was on
this particular evening like madame de Renal always was,
when she thought of Julien. Love of the head has doubtless
more intelligence than true love, but it only has moments of
enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgment on
itself incessantly ; far from distracting thought it is made by
sheer force of thought.

On returning home Mathilde, in spite of Madame de la
Mole's remonstrances, pretended to have a fever and spent a
part of the night in going over this melody on her piano. She
sang the words of the celebrated air which had so fascinated
her :

Devo punirmi, devo punirmi.
Se troppo amai, etc.

As the result of this night of madness, she imagined that
she had succeeded in triumphing over her love. This page
will be prejudicial in more than one way to the unfortunate
author. Frigid souls will accuse him of indecency. But the
young ladies who shine in the Paris salons have no right to
feel insulted at the supposition that one of their number might
be liable to those transports of madness which have been de-
grading the character of Mathilde. That character is purely
imaginary, and is even drawn quite differently from that social
code which will guarantee so distinguished a place in the
world's history to nineteenth century civilization.

The young girls who have adorned this winter's balls are
certainly not lacking in prudence.

I do not think either that they can be accused of being un-
duly scornful of a brilliant fortune, horses, fine estates and all

366 THE RED AND THE BLACK

the guarantees of a pleasant position in society. Far from
finding these advantages simply equivalent to boredom, they
usually concentrate on them their most constant desires and
and devote to them such passion as their hearts possess.

Nor again is it love which is the dominant principle in the
career of young men who, like Julien, are gifted with some
talent; they attach themselves with an irresistible grip to
some coterie, and when the coterie succeeds all the good
things of society are rained upon them. Woe to the studious
man who belongs to no coterie, even his smallest and most
doubtful successes will constitute a grievance, and lofty virtue
will rob him and triumph. Yes, monsieur, a novel is a mirror
which goes out on a highway. Sometimes it reflects the azure
of the heavens, sometimes the mire of the pools of mud on
the way, and the man who carries this mirror in his knapsack
is forsooth to be accused by you of being immoral ! His
mirror shows the mire, and you accuse the mirror ! Rather
accuse the main road where the mud is, or rather the
inspector of roads who allows the water to accumulate and
the mud to form.

Now that it is quite understood that Mathilde's character
is impossible in our own age, which is as discreet as it is
virtuous, I am less frightened of offence by continuing the
history of the follies of this charming girl.

During the whole of the following day she looked out for
opportunities of convincing herself of her triumph over her
mad passion. Her great aim was to displease Julien in
everything ; but not one of his movements escaped her.

Julien was too unhappy, and above all too agitated to
appreciate so complicated a stratagem of passion. Still less
was he capable of seeing how favourable it really was to him.
He was duped by it. His unhappiness had perhaps never
been so extreme. His actions were so little controlled by his
intellect that if some mournful philosopher had said to him,
" Think how to exploit as quickly as you can those symptoms
which promise to be favourable to you. In this kind of head-
love which is seen at Paris, the same mood cannot 1 ast more
than two days," he would not have understood him. But
however ecstatic he might feel, Julien was a man of honour.
Discretion was his first duty. He appreciated it. Asking
advice, describing his agony to the first man who came along

THE OPERA BOUFFE 367

would have constituted a happiness analogous to that of the
unhappy man who, when traversing a burning desert receives
from heaven a drop of icy water. He realised the danger,
was frightened of answering an indiscreet question by a
torrent of tears, and shut himself up in his own room.

He saw Mathilde walking in the garden for a long time.
When she at last left it, he went down there and approached
the rose bush from which she had taken a flower.

The night was dark and he could abandon himself to his
unhappiness without fear of being seen. It was obvious to
him that mademoiselle de la Mole loved one of those young
officers with whom she had chatted so gaily. She had loved
him, but she had realised his little merit, " and as a matter of
fact I had very little," Julien said to himself with full con-
viction. " Taking me all round I am a very dull, vulgar
person, very boring to others and quite unbearable to myself."
He was mortally disgusted with all his good qualities, and
with all the things which he had once loved so enthusiastically ;
and it was when his imagination was in this distorted condition
that he undertook to judge life by means of its aid. This
mistake is typical of a superior man.

The idea of suicide presented itself to him several times ;
the idea was full of charm, and like a delicious rest ; because
it was the glass of iced water offered to the wretch dying of
thirst and heat in the desert.

" My death will increase the contempt she has for me," he
exclaimed. " What a memory I should leave her."

Courage is the only resource of a human being who has
fallen into this last abyss of unhappiness. Julien did not
have sufficient genius to say to himself, " I must dare," but
as he looked at the window of Mathilde's room he saw
through the blinds that she was putting out her light. He
conjured up that charming room which he had seen, alas !
once in his whole life. His imagination did not go any
further.

One o'clock struck. Hearing the stroke of the clock and
saying to himself, " I will climb up the ladder," scarcely
took a moment.

It was the flash of genius, good reasons crowded on his
mind. " May I be more fortunate than before," he said to
himself. He ran to the ladder. The gardener had chained

368 THE RED AND THE BLACK

it up. With the help of the cock of one of his little pistols
which he broke, Julien, who for the time being was animated
by a superhuman force, twisted one of the links of the chain
which held the ladder. He was master of it in a few minutes,
and placed it against Mathilde's window.

" She will be angry and riddle me with scornful words !
What does it matter ? I will give her a kiss, one last kiss. I
will go up to my room and kill myself . . . my lips will
touch her cheek before I die."

He flew up the ladder and knocked at the blind ; Mathilde
heard him after some minutes and tried to open the blind but
the ladder was in the way. Julien hung to the iron hook
intending to keep the blind open, and at the imminent risk of
falling down, gave the ladder a violent shake which moved it
a little. Mathilde was able to open the blind.

He threw himself into the window more dead than alive.

" So it is you, dear," she said as she rushed into his arms.
******

The excess of Julien's happiness was indescribable.
Mathilde's almost equalled his own.

She talked against herself to him and denounced herself.

" Punish me for my awful pride," she said to him, clasping
him in her arms so tightly as almost to choke him. " You
are my master, dear, I am your slave. I must ask your pardon
on my knees for having tried to rebel." She left his arms to
fall at his feet. " Yes," she said to him, still intoxicated with
happiness and with love, " you are my master, reign over me
for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her severely."

In another moment she tore herself from his arms, and
lit a candle, and it was only by a supreme effort that Julien
could prevent her from cutting off a whole tress of her hair.

" I want to remind myself," she said to him, " that I am
your handmaid. If I am ever led astray again by my
abominable pride, show me this hair and say, * It is not a
question of the emotion which your soul may be feeling at
present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour."

But it is wiser to suppress the description of so intense a
transport of delirious happiness.

Julien's unselfishness was equal to his happiness. " I must
go down by the ladder," he said to Mathilde, when he saw
the dawn of day appear from the quarter of the east over the

THE OPERA BOUFFE 369

distant chimneys beyond the garden. " The sacrifice that I
impose on myself is worthy of you. I deprive myself of some
hours of the most astonishing happiness that a human soul
can savour, but it is a sacrifice I make for the sake of your
reputation. If you know my heart you will appreciate how
violent is the strain to which I am putting myself. Will you
always be to me what you are now ? But honour speaks, it
suffices. Let me tell you that since our last interview, thieves
have not been the only object of suspicion. M. de la Mole
has set a guard in the garden. M. Croisenois is surrounded
by spies : they know what he does every night."

Mathilde burst out laughing at this idea. Her mother and
a chamber-maid were woken up, they suddenly began to
speak to her through the door. Julien looked at her, she
grew pale as she scolded the chamber-maid, and she did not
deign to speak to her mother. " But suppose they think of
opening the window, they will see the ladder," Julien said to
her.

He clasped her again in his arms, rushed on to the ladder,
and slid, rather than climbed down ; he was on the ground
in a moment.

Three seconds after the ladder was in the avenue of pines,
and Mathilde's honour was saved. Julien returned to his
room and found that he was bleeding and almost naked. He
had wounded himself in sliding down in that dare-devil
way.

Extreme happiness had made him regain all the energy of
his character. If twenty men had presented themselves it
would have proved at this moment only an additional pleasure
to have attacked them unaided. Happily his military prowess
was not put to the proof. He laid the ladder in its usual
place and replaced the chain which held it. He did not
forget to efface the mark which the ladder had left on the
bed of exotic flowers under Mathilde's window.

As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the
darkness and satisfying himself that the mark had entirely dis-
appeared, he felt something fall down on his hands. It was a
whole tress of Mathilde's hair which she had cut off and thrown
down to him.

She was at the window.

" That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a

24

370 THE RED AND THE BLACK

fairly loud voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I re-
nounce the exercise of my reason, be my master."

Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to
fetch the ladder again and climbing back into her room.
Finally reason prevailed.

Getting back into the hotel from the garden was not easy.
He succeeded in forcing the door of a cellar. Once in the
house he was obliged to break through the door of his room
as silently as possible. In his agitation he had left in the
little room which he had just abandoned so rapidly, the key
which was in the pocket of his coat. " I only hope she thinks
of hiding that fatal trophy," he thought.

Finally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was
rising he fell into a deep sleep.

The breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He
appeared in the dining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde
came in. Julien's pride felt deliciously flattered as he saw the
love which shone in the eyes of this beautiful creature who was
surrounded by so much homage; but soon his discretion had
occasion to be alarmed.

Making an excuse of the little time that she had had to do
her hair, Mathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien
could see at the first glance the full extent of the sacrifice that
she had made for his sake, by cutting off her hair on the
previous night.

If it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by any-
thing whatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it.
A whole tress of her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within
half an inch of the scalp.

Mathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping
with this initial imprudence. One might have said that she
had made a specific point of trying to inform the whole world
of her mad passion for Julien. Happily on this particular day
M. de la Mole and the marquis were very much concerned
about an approaching bestowal of " blue ribbons " which was
going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was not
comprised. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was
talking to Julien, happened to call him " My Master." He
blushed up to the whites of his eyes.

Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day,
whether by chance or the deliberate policy of madame de la

THE OPERA BOUFFE 371

Mole. In the evening when she passed from the dining-room
into the salon, however, she managed to say to Julien : "You
may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has just
decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my
room."

This day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at
the zenith of happiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of
the following day he installed himself in the library. He
hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole would deign to appear
there; he had written her an interminable letter. He only
saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was
done to-day with the very greatest care ; a marvellous art had
managed to hide the place where the hair had been cut. She
looked at Julien once or twice, but her eyes were polite and
calm, and there was no question of calling him " My Master."

Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing
Mathilde was reproaching herself for all she had done for him.
After mature reflection, she had come to the conclusion that
he was a person who, though not absolutely commonplace,
was yet not sufficiently different from the common ruck to
deserve all the strange follies that she had ventured for his
sake. To sum up she did not give love a single thought ; on
this particular day she was tired of loving.

As for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen.
He was a successive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and
despair during this breakfast which he thought would never
end.

As soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew
rather than ran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and
galloped off. " I must kill my heart through sheer force of
physical fatigue," he said to himself as he galloped through
the Meudon woods. " What have I done, what have I said to
deserve a disgrace like this ? "

" I must do nothing and say nothing to-day," he thought as
he re-entered the hotel. " I must be as dead physically as I
am morally." Julien saw nothing any more, it was only his
corpse which kept moving.

CHAPTER L

THE JAPANESE VASE

His heart does not first realise the full extremity of his unhappi-
ness : he is more troubled than moved. But as reason returns he
feels the depth of his misfortune. All the pleasures of life seem
to have been destroyed, he can only feel the sharp barbs of a
lacerating despair. But what is the use of talking of physical
pain ? What pain which is only felt by the body can be com-
pared to this pain 1Jean Paul.

The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress : he
found Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother
and M. de Croisenois to promise her that they would not go
and spend the evening at Suresnes with madame the marechale
de Fervaques.

It would have been difficult to have shown herself more
amiable or fascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and
several of their friends came in after dinner. One would have
said that mademoiselle de la Mole had commenced again to
cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality at the same time
as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was delightful
this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and in-
sisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame
de la Mole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the
group as it had been in the winter.

Mathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate
she found it absolutely boring : it was bound up with the
memory of Julien.

Unhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero
had the bad taste to stop by that little straw chair which had
formerly witnessed his most brilliant triumphs. To-day none
spoke to him, his presence seemed to be unnoticed, and worse
than that. Those of mademoiselle de la Mole's friends who

THE JAPANESE VASE 373

were sitting near him at the end of the sofa, made a point of
somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate he
thought so.

" It is a court disgrace," he thought. He tried to study
for a moment the people who were endeavouring to overwhelm
him with their contempt. M. de Luz had an important post
in the King's suite, the result of which was that the handsome
officer began every conversation with every listener who came
along by telling him this special piece of information. His
uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud and reckoned
on spending the night there. This detail was introduced with
all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be
worked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a
stern gaze of unhappiness, he observed that this good amiable
young man attributed a great influence to occult causes. He
even went so far as to become melancholy and out of temper
if he saw an event of the slightest importance ascribed to a
simple and perfectly natural cause.

" There is an element of madness in this," Julien said to
himself. This man's character has a striking analogy with
that of the Emperor Alexander, such as the Prince Korasoff
described it to me. During the first year of his stay in Paris
poor Julien, fresh from the seminary and dazzled by the graces
of all these amiable young people, whom he found so novel,
had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was only
beginning to become outlined in his eyes.

" I am playing an undignified role here," he suddenly
thought. The question was, how he could leave the little
straw chair without undue awkwardness. He wanted to invent
something, and tried to extract some novel excuse from an
imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was com-
pelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be
owned, somewhat poor in resources of this kind.

The poor boy was still very much out of his element, and
could not have exhibited a more complete and noticeable
awkwardness when he got up to leave the salon. His misery
was only too palpable in his whole manner. He had been
playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the role of an
officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to
hide what one really thinks.

The critical observations he had just made on his rivals

374 THE RED AND THE BLACK

prevented him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too
tragically. His pride could take support in what had taken
place the previous day. " Whatever may be their advantages
over me," he thought, as he went into the garden alone,
" Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what, twice
in my life, she has deigned to be to me ! " His penetration
did not go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the
character of the extraordinary person whom chance had just
made the supreme mistress of all his happiness.

He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his
horse dead tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the
evening to go near the blue sofa to which Mathilde remained
constant. He noticed that comte Norbert did not even
deign to look at him when he met him about the house.
" He must be doing something very much against the grain,"
he thought ; " he is naturally so polite."

Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of
his physical fatigue, memories which were only too seductive
commenced to invade his imagination. He had not the
genius to see that, inasmuch as his long rides on horseback
over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected him, and
had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was
consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of
chance. He thought that one thing would give his pain an
infinite relief: it would be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what
would he venture to say to her ?

He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one
morning when he suddenly saw her enter the library.

" I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."
" Great heavens ! who told you ? "

" I know, anyway ; that is enough. If you are dishonour-
able, you can ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger,
which I do not believe to be real, will certainly not prevent
me from being sincere. I do not love you any more, monsieur,
I have been led astray by my foolish imagination."

Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this
terrible blow, Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could
have been more absurd. Does one make any excuses for
failure to please ? But reason had no longer any control over
his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get the determina-
tion of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as he

THE JAPANESE VASE 375

kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not
listened to his words; their sound irritated her. She could
not conceive how he could have the audacity to interrupt her.

She was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorse-
ful virtue and remorseful pride. She felt to some extent
pulverised by the idea of having given a little abbe, who was
the son of a peasant, rights over her. " It is almost," she said
to herself, in those moments when she exaggerated her own
misfortune, " as though I had a weakness for one of my
footmen to reproach myself with." In bold, proud natures
there is only one step from anger against themselves to wrath
against others. In these cases the very transports of fury
constitute a vivid pleasure.

In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the
point of loading Julien with the signs of the most extreme
contempt. She had infinite wit, and this wit was always
triumphant in the art of torturing vanity and wounding it
cruelly.

For the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected
to the energy of a superior intellect, which was animated
against him by the most violent hate. Far from having at
present the slightest thought of defending himself, he came to
despise himself. Hearing himself overwhelmed with such
marks of contempt which were so cleverly calculated to destroy
any good opinion that he might have of himself, he thought
that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.

As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride
to punish in this way both herself and him for the adoration
that she had felt some days previously.

She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks
which she addressed to him with so much gusto.

All she had to do was to repeat what the advocate of the
other side had been saying against her love in her own heart
for the last eight days.

Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappi-
ness. He wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole
took hold of his arm authoritatively.

" Be good enough to remark," he said to her, " that you are
talking very loud. You will be heard in the next room."

"What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered
haughtily. " Who will dare to say they have heard me ? I

376 THE RED AND THE BLACK

want to cure your miserable vanity once and for all of any
ideas you may have indulged in on my account."

When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so
astonished that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness.
"She does not love me any more," he repeated to himself,
speaking aloud as though to teach himself how he stood. " It
seems that she has loved me eight or ten days, but I shall love
her all my life."

" Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my
heart so few days back ? "

Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride.
So she had been able to break with him for ever ! So complete
a triumph over so strong an inclination rendered her completely
happy. "So this little gentleman will understand, once and
for all, that he has not, and will never have, any dominion
over me." She was so happy that in reality she ceased to
love at this particular moment.

In a less passionate being than Julien love would have
become impossible after a scene of such awful humiliation.
Without deviating for a single minute from the requirements of
her own self-respect, mademoiselle de la Mole had addressed
to him some of those unpleasant remarks which are so well
thought out that they may seem true, even when remembered
in cold blood.

The conclusion which Julien drew in the first moment of so
surprising a scene, was that Mathilde was infinitely proud.
He firmly believed that all was over between them for ever,
and none the less, he was awkward and nervous towards her
at breakfast on the following day. This was a fault from
which up to now he had been exempt.

Both in small things as in big it was his habit to know what
he ought and wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.

The same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked
him for a fairly rare, seditious pamphlet which her cure had
surreptitiously brought her in the morning, and Julien, as he
took it from a bracket, knocked over a blue porcelain vase
which was as ugly as it could possibly be.

Madame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and
proceeded to contemplate at close quarters the ruins of her
beloved vase. " It was old Japanese," she said. " It came
to me from my great aunt, the abbess of Chelles. It was a

THE JAPANESE VASE 377

present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of Orleans,
who had given it to his daughter. . . ."

Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt
delighted at seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought
horribly ugly, was broken. Julien was taciturn, and not un-
duly upset. He saw mademoiselle de la Mole quite near him.

"This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever.
The same is the case with the sentiment which was once
master of my heart. I would ask you to accept my apologies
for all the pieces of madness which it has made me commit."
And he went out.

" One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he
went out of the room, " that this M. Sorel is quite proud of
what he has just done."

These words went right home to Mathilde's heart. " It is
true," she said to herself; " my mother has guessed right.
That is the sentiment which animates him." It was only then
that she ceased rejoicing over yesterday's scene. " Well, it is
all over," she said to herself, with an apparent calm. " It is
a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and humiliating
mistake ! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of
my life."

" Why didn't I speak the truth ? " thought Julien. " Why
am I still tortured by the love which I once had for that mad
woman ? "

Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it
would be, his love grew more and more rapidly. " She is mad,
it is true," he said to himself. " Is she any the less adorable
for that ? Is it possible for anyone to be prettier ? Is not
mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal quintessence of all the most
vivid pleasures of the most elegant civilisation?" These
memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of Julien's mind,
and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his reason.

It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this
character. Its stern struggles only increase the fascination.

Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase,
Julien was unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in
the world.

CHAPTER LI

THE SECRET NOTE

I have seen everything I relate, and if I may have
made a mistake when I saw it, I am certainly not de-
ceiving you in telling you of it.

Letter to the author.

The marquis summoned him; M. de la Mole looked re-
juvenated, his eye was brilliant.

" Let us discuss your memory a little," he said to Julien,
" it is said to be prodigious. Could you learn four pages by
heart and go and say them at London, but without altering
a single word ? "

The marquis was irritably fingering, the day's Quottdienne,
and was trying in vain to hide an extreme seriousness which
Julien had never noticed in him before, even when discussing
the Frilair lawsuit.

Julien had already learned sufficient manners to appreciate
that he ought to appear completely taken in by the lightness
of tone which was being manifested.

" This number of the Quottdienne is not very amusing
possibly, but if M. the marquis will allow me, I shall do myself
the honour to-morrow morning of reciting it to him from
beginning to end."

"What, even the advertisements?"

" Quite accurately and without leaving out a word."

" You give me your word ? " replied the marquis with sudden
gravity.

" Yes, monsieur ; the only thing which could upset my
memory is the fear of breaking my promise."

" The fact is, I forgot to put this question to you yesterday :
I am not going to ask for your oath never to repeat what you

THE SECRET NOTE 379

are going to hear. I know you too well to insult you like
that. I have answered for you. I am going to take you into
a salon where a dozen persons will he assembled. You will
make a note of what each one says.

" Do not be uneasy. It will not be a confused conversation
by any means. Each one will speak in his turn, though not
necessarily in an orderly manner," added the marquis falling
back into that light, subtle manner which was so natural to
him. "While we are talking, you will write out twenty pages
and will come back here with me, and we will get those twenty
pages down to four, and those are the four pages you will
recite to me to-morrow morning instead of the four pages
of the Quotidienne. You will leave immediately afterwards.
You must post about like a young man travelling on pleasure.
Your aim will be to avoid attracting attention. You will
arrive at the house of a great personage. You will there need
more skill. Your business will then be to take in all his
entourage, for among his secretaries and his servants are some
people who have sold themselves to our enemies, and who spy
on our travelling agents in order to intercept them.

" You will have an insignificant letter of introduction. At
the moment his Excellency looks at you, you will take out
this watch of mine, which I will lend you for the journey.
Wear it now, it will be so much done ; at any rate give me
yours.

" The duke himself will be good enough to write at your
dictation the four pages you have learnt by heart.

" Having done this, but not earlier, mind you, you can, if
his Excellency questions you, tell him about the meeting at
which you are now going to be present.

" You will be prevented from boring yourself on the journey
between Paris and the minister's residence by the thought
that there are people who would like nothing better than to
fire a shot at M. the abbe Sorel. In that case that gentleman's
mission will be finished, and I see a great delay, for how are
we to know of your death, my dear friend ? Even your zeal
cannot go to the length of informing us of it.

" Run straight away and buy a complete suit," went on the
marquis seriously. " Dress in the fashion of two years ago.
To-night you must look somewhat badly groomed. When you
travel, on the other hand, you will be as usual. Does this

380 THE RED AND THE BLACK

surprise you ? Does your suspiciousness guess the secret ?
Yes, my friend, one of the venerable personages you are going
to hear deliver his opinion, is perfectly capable of giving
information as the result of which you stand a very good
chance of being given at least opium some fine evening in
some good inn where you will have asked for supper."

" It is better," said Julien, " to do an extra thirty leagues
and not take the direct road. It is a case of Rome, I

suppose " The marquis assumed an expression of

extreme haughtiness and dissatisfaction which Julien had never
seen him wear since Bray-le-Haut.

" That is what you will know, monsieur, when I think it
proper to tell you. I do not like questions."

" That was not one," answered Julien eagerly. " I swear,
monsieur, I was thinking quite aloud. My mind was trying
to find out the safest route."

" Yes, it seems your mind was a very long way off. Re-
member that an emissary, and particularly one of your age
should not appear to be a man who forces confidences."

Julien was very mortified; he was in the wrong. His vanity
tried to find an excuse and did not find one.

" You understand," added monsieur de la Mole, " that one
always falls back on one's heart when one has committed some
mistake."

An hour afterwards Julien was in the marquis's ante-
chamber. He looked quite like a servant with his old
clothes, a tie of a dubious white, and a certain touch of the
usher in his whole appearance. The marquis burst out
laughing as he saw him, and it was only then that Julien's
justification was complete.

" If this young man betrays me," said M. de la Mole to
himself, " whom is one to trust ? And yet, when one acts,
one must trust someone. My son and his brilliant friends of
the same calibre have as much courage and loyalty as a
hundred thousand men. If it were necessary to fight, they
would die on the steps of the throne. They know everything
except what one needs in emergency. Devil take me if I
can find a single one among them who can learn four pages
by heart and do a hundred leagues without being tracked
down. Norbert would know how to sell his life as dearly as
his grandfathers did. But any conscript could do as much."

THE SECRET NOTE 381

The marquis fell into a profound reverie. " As for selling
one's life too," he said with a sigh, " perhaps this Sorel would
manage it quite as well as he could.

" Let us get into the carriage," said the marquis as though
to chase away an unwanted idea.

" Monsieur," said Julien, " while they were getting this suit
ready for me, I learnt the first page of to-days Quotidienne by
heart."

The marquis took the paper. Julien recited it without
making a single mistake. " Good," said the marquis, who
this night felt very diplomatic. " During the time he takes
over this our young man will not notice the streets through
which we are passing."

They arrived in a big salon that looked melancholy enough
and was partly upholstered in green velvet. In the middle of
the room a scowling lackey had just placed a big dining-table
which he subsequently changed into a writing-table by means
of an immense green inkstained tablecloth which had been
plundered from some minister.

The master of the house was an enormous man whose name
was not pronounced. Julien thought he had the appearance
and eloquence of a man who ruminated. At a sign from the
marquis, Julien had remained at the lower end of the table.
In order to keep himself in countenance, he began to cut
quills. He counted out of the corner of his eye seven visitors,
but Julien could only see their backs. Two seemed to him
to be speaking to M. de la Mole on a footing of equality, the
others seemed more or less respectful.

A new person entered without being announced. " This
is strange," thought Julien. " People are not announced
in this salon. Is this precaution taken in my honour ? "
Everybody got up to welcome the new arrival. He wore the
same extremely distinguished decoration as three of the other
persons who were in the salon. They talked fairly low. In
endeavouring to form an opinion of the new comer, Julien
was reduced to seeing what he could learn from his features
and his appeareance. He was short and thick-set. He had
a high colour and a brilliant eye and an expression that
looked like a malignant boar, and nothing else.

Julien's attention was partly distracted by the almost
immediate arrival of a very different kind of person. It was a

382 THE RED AND THE BLACK

a tall very thin man who wore three or four waistcoats. His
eye was caressing, his demeanour polite.

" He looks exactly like the old bishop of Besancon," thought
Julien. This man evidently belonged to the church, was
apparently not more than fifty to fifty-five years of age, and
no one could have looked more paternal than he did.

The young bishop of Agde appeared. He looked very
astonished when, in making a scrutiny of those present, his
gaze fell upon Julien. He had not spoken to him since the
ceremony of Bray le-Haut. His look of surprise embarrassed
and irritated Julien. " What ! " he said to himself, " will
knowing a man always turn out unfortunate for me ? I don't
feel the least bit intimidated by all those great lords whom I
have never seen, but the look of that young bishop freezes me.
I must admit that I am a very strange and very unhappy
person."

An extremely swarthy little man entered noisily soon
afterwards and started talking as soon as he reached the door.
He had a yellow complexion and looked a little mad. As
soon as this ruthless talker arrived, the others formed them-
selves into knots with the apparent object of avoiding the
bother of listening to him.

As they went away from the mantelpiece they came near
the lower end of the table where Julien was placed. His
countenance became more and more embarrassed, for whatever
efforts he made, he could not avoid hearing, and in spite of
all his lack of experience he appreciated all the moment of the
things which they were discussing with such complete frank-
ness, and the importance which the high personages whom
he apparently had under his observation must attach to their
being kept secret.

Julien had already cut twenty quills as slowly as possible ;
this distraction would shortly be no longer available. He
looked in vain at M. de la Mole's eyes for an order; the
marquis had forgotten him.

" What I am doing is ridiculous," he said to himself as he
cut his quills, " but persons with so mediocre an appearance
and who are handling such great interests either for themselves
or for others must be extremely liable to take offence. My
unfortunate look has a certain questioning and scarcely
respectful expression, which will doubtless irritate them. But

THE SECRET NOTE 383

if I palpably lower my eyes I shall look as if I were picking up
every word they said."

His embarrassment was extreme, he was listening to strange
things.

CHAPTER LII

THE DISCUSSION

The republic : For one man to day who will sacrifice
everything for the public welfare, there are thousands and
millions who think of nothing except their enjoyments and
their vanity. One is requested in Paris by reason of
the qualities not of one's self but of one's carriage.
NAPOLEON, Memorial.

The footman rushed in saying " Monsieur the duke de "

" Hold your tongue, you are just a fool," said the duke
as he entered. He spoke these words so well, and with so
much majesty, that Julien could not help thinking this great
person's accomplishments were limited to the science of
snubbing a lackey. Julien raised his eyes and immediately
lowered them. He had so fully appreciated the significance
of the new arrival that he feared that his look might be an
indiscretion.

The duke was a man of fifty dressed like a dandy and
with a jerky walk. He had a narrow head with a large nose
and a face that jutted forward ; it would have been difficult to
have looked at the same time more insignificant. His arrival
was the signal for the opening of the meeting.

Julien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical
observations by de la Mole's voice. " I present to you M.
the abbe Sorel," said the Marquis. "He is gifted with an
astonishing memory ; it is scarcely an hour ago since I spoke
to him of the mission by which he might be honoured, and
he has learned the first page of the Quotidienne by heart
in order to give proof of his memory."

" Ah ! foreign news of that poor N " said the master of
the house. He took up the paper eagerly and looked at
Julien in a manner rendered humorous by its own self-
mportance. " Speak, monsieur," he said to him.

THE DISCUSSION 385

The silence was profound, all eyes were fixed on Julien.
He recited so well that the duke said at the end of twenty
lines, " That is enough." The little man who looked like a
boar sat down. He was the president, for he had scarcely
taken his place before he showed Julien a card-table and
signed to him to bring it near him. Julien established
himself at it with writing materials. He counted twelve
persons seated round the green table cloth.

" M. Sorel," said the Duke, " retire into next room, you
will be called."

The master of the house began to look very anxious.
" The shutters are not shut," he said to his neighbour in a
semi-whisper. " It is no good looking out of the window," he
stupidly cried to Julien " so here I am more or less mixed up
in a conspiracy," thought the latter. " Fortunately it is not one
of those which lead to the Place-de-Greve. Even though
there were danger, I owe this and even more to the marquis,
and should be glad to be given the chance of making up for
all the sorrow which my madness may one day occasion him."

While thinking of his own madness and his own unhappiness
he regarded the place where he was, in such a way as to
imprint it upon his memory for ever. He then remembered
for the first time that he had never heard the lackey tell the
name of the street, and that the marquis had taken a fiacre
which he never did in the ordinary way. Julien was left to
his own reflections for a long time. He was in a salon
upholstered in red velvet with large pieces of gold lace. A
large ivory crucifix was on the consol-table and a gilt-edged,
magnificently bound copy of M. de Maistre's book The Pope
was on the mantelpiece. Julien opened it so as not to appear
to be eavesdropping. From time to time they talked loudly in
the next room. At last the door was opened and he was
called in.

" Remember, gentlemen," the president was saying " that
from this moment we are talking in the presence of the duke

of . This gentleman," he said, pointing to Julien, " is a

young acolyte devoted to our sacred cause who by the aid of
his marvellous memory will repeat quite easily our very
slightest words."

" It is your turn to speak, Monsieur," he said pointing to
the paternal looking personage who wore three or four waist-

25

386 THE RED AND THE BLACK

coats. Julien thought it would have been more natural to
have called him the gentleman in the waistcoats. He took
some paper and wrote a great deal.

(At this juncture the author would have liked to have put a
page of dots. " That," said his publisher, " would be clumsy
and in the case of so light a work clumsiness is death."

" Politics," replies the author, " is a stone tied round the
neck of literature which submerges it in less than six months.
Politics in the midst of imaginative matter is like a pistol shot
in the middle of a concert. The noise is racking without
being energetic. It does not harmonise with the sound
of any instrument. These politics will give mortal offence to
one half of the readers and will bore the other half, who will
have already read the ideas in question as set out in the
morning paper in its own drastic manner."

" If your characters don't talk politics," replied the publisher,
" they cease to be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is no
longer a mirror as you claim ? ")

Julien's record ran to twenty-six pages. Here is a very
diluted extract, for it has betn necessary to adopt the
invariable practice of suppressing those ludicrous passages,
whose violence would have seemed either offensive or
intolerable (see the Gazette des Tribunaux).

The man with the waistcoats and the paternal expression
(he was perhaps a bishop) often smiled and then his eyes,
which were surrounded with a floating forest of eyebrows,
assumed a singular brilliance and an unusually decided expres-
sion. This personage whom they made speak first before the
duke ("but what duke is it?" thought Julien to himself)
with the apparent object of expounding various points of view
and fulfilling the functions of an advocate-general, appeared to
Julien to fall into the uncertainty and lack of definiteness with
which those officials are so often taxed. During the course of
the discussion the duke went so far as to reproach him on
this score. After several sentences of morality and indulgent
philosophy the man in the waistcoats said,

" Noble England, under the guiding hand of a great man,
the immortal Pitt, has spent forty milliards of francs in
opposing the revolution. If this meeting will allow me to
treat so melancholy a subject with some frankness, England
fails to realise sufficiently that in dealing with a man like

THE DISCUSSION 387

Buonaparte, especially when they have nothing to oppose him
with, except a bundle of good intentions there is nothing
decisive except personal methods."

" Ah ! praising assassination again ! " said the master 01" the
house anxiously.

" Spare us your sentimental sermons," cried the president
angrily. His boarlike eye shone with a savage brillance.
" Go on," he said to the man with the waistcoatb. The
cheeks and the forehead of the president became purple.

" Noble England," replied the advocate-general, " is crushed
to-day : for each Englishman before paying for his own bread
is obliged to pay the interest on forty milliards of francs which
were used against the Jacobins. She has no more Pitt."

She has the Duke of Wellington," said a military personage
looking very important.

" Please, gentlemen, silence," exclaimed the president. " If
we are still going to dispute, there was no point in having M.
Sorel in."

"We know that monsieur has many ideas," said the duke
irritably, looking at the interrupter who was an old Napoleonic
general. Julien saw that these words contained some personal
and very offensive allusion. Everybody smiled, the turn- coat
general appeared beside himself with rage.

" There is no longer a Pitt, gentlemen," went on the speaker
with all the despondency of a man who has given up all hope
of bringing his listeners to reason. " If there were a new Pitt
in England, you would not dupe a nation twice over by the
same means."

"That's why a victorious general, a Buonaparte, will be
henceforward impossible in France," exclaimed the military
interrupter.

On this occasion neither the president nor the duke ventured
to get angry, though Julien thought he read in their eyes that
they would very much like to have done so. They lowered
their eyes, and the duke contented himself with sighing in
quite an audible manner. But the speaker was put upon his
mettle.

" My audience is eager for me to finish," he said vigorously,
completely discarding that smiling politeness and that balanced
diction that Julien thought had expressed his character so
well. " It is eager for me to finish, it is not grateful to me for

388 THE RED AND THE BLACK

the efforts I am making to offend nobody's ears, however long
they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will be brief.

" I will tell you in quite common words : England has not
got a sou with which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself
were to come back he would never succeed with all his genius
in duping the small English landowners, for they know that
the short Waterloo campaign alone cost them a milliard of
francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the speaker,
becoming more and more animated, " I will say this to you :
Help yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to
help you with, and when England does not pay, Austria,
Russia and Prussia who will only have courage but have no
money cannot launch more than one or two campaigns
against France.

" One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited
by the Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and
possibly in the second ; but, even though I seem a revolutionary
in your prejudiced eyes, in the third campaign in the third
campaign I say you will have the soldiers of 1794 who were
no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792."

At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from
three or four quarters.

" Monsieur," said the president to Julien, " Go and make a
precis in the next room qf the beginning of the report which
you have written out."

Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just
dealing with the question of probabilities which formed
the usual subject for his meditations. " They are frightened
of my making fun of them," he thought. When he was
called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a seriousuess
which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so
well,

" Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, ' is it god, table or
tub ? ' especially applicable to this unhappy people. ' // is god '
exclaims the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that
this noble and profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your
own initiative, and noble France will appear again, almost such
as our ancestors made her, and as our own eyes have seen her
before the death of Louis XVI.

" England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we
do, or at any rate her noble lords do. Without English gold,

THE DISCUSSION 389

Austria and Prussia would only be able to give battle two or
three times. Would that be sufficient to ensure a successful
occupation like the one which M. de Richelieu so foolishly
failed to exploit in 181 7 ? I do not think so."

At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by
the hushes of the whole room. It came again from the old
Imperial general who wanted the blue ribbon and wished to
figure among the authors of the secret note.

" I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar
had subsided. He laid stress on the " I " with an insolence
which charmed Julien.

"That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he
made his pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.

M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the
turncoat with a well turned phrase.

11 It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in
a more even tone, " on whom we shall be able to rely for a
new military occupation. All those young men who write
inflammatory articles in the Globe will provide you with three
or four thousand young captains among whom you may find
men with the genius, but not the good intentions of a Kleber,
a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru."

" We did not know how to glorify him," said the president.
"He should have been immortalized."

"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties,"
went on M. de la Mole ; " but two parties not merely in name,
but with clear-cut lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has
got to be crushed. On the one hand the journalists and the
electors, in a word, public opinion ; youth and all that admire
it. While it is stupefying itself with the noise of its own vain
words, we have certain advantages of administrating the
expenditure of the budget."

At this point there was another interruption.

"As for you, monsieur," said M. de !a Mole to the
interrupter, with an admirable haughtiness and ease of
mnnner, " you do not spend, if the words chokes you, but you
devour the forty thousand francs put down to you in the State
budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from the
civil list."

" Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold
enough to take you for an example. Like your noble

390 THE RED AND THE BLACK

ancestors, who followed Saint Louis to the crusade, you ought
in return for those hundred and twenty thousand francs to
show us at any rate a regiment ; a company, why, what am I
saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men,
ready to fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of
risking their lives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys,
who in the event of a rebellion would frighten you yourselves."
" Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow,
gentlemen, so long as you refrain from creating in each
department a force of five hundred devoted men, devoted I
mean, not only with all the French courage, but with all the
Spanish constancy.

" Half of this force ought to be composed of our children,
our nephews, of real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will
have beside him not a little talkative bourgeois ready to hoist
the tricolor cockade, if 1815 turns up again, but a good,
frank and simple peasant like Catheline.au. Our gentleman
will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother if it
is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in
order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in
each department. Then you will be able to reckon on a
foreign occupation. The foreign soldier will never penetrate
even as far as Dijon if he is not certain of finding five hundred
friendly soldiers in each department.

" The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a
position to announce to them that you have twenty thousand
gentlemen ready to take up arms in order to open to them the
gates of France. The service is troublesome, you say.
Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our lives. There is
war to the death between the liberty of the press and our
existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become
peasants, or take up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do
not be stupid. Open your eyes.

" ' Form your battalions] I would say to you in the words
of the Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will
then be found who, touched by the imminent peril of the
monarchical principle, will make a dash three hundred leagues
from his own country, and will do for you what Gustavus did
for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go on talking
without acting ? In fifty years' time there will be only
presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with

THE DISCUSSION 391

those three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests
and the gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying
court to squalid majorities.

" It is no use your saying that at the present time France
has not a single accredited general who is universally known
and loved, that the army is only known and organised in the
interests of the throne and the church, and that it has been
deprived of all its old troopers, while each of the Prussian and
Austrian regiments count fifty non-commissioned officers who
have seen fire.

" Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes
are spoiling for war "

" A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in
a pompous tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical
dignitary, for M. de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead oj
getting angry, a circumstance which greatly impressed Julien.

"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen.
The man who needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be
ill advised to say to his surgeon, ' this disease is very healthy.'
If I may use the metaphor, gentlemen, the noble duke of
is our surgeon."

"So the great words have at last been uttered," thought
Julien. " It is towards the that I shall gallop to-night."

CHAPTER LIII

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY

The first law of every being, is lo preserve itself and live. You
sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn ripen. Macchiavelli.

The great personage continued. One could see that he knew
his subject. He proceeded to expound the following great
truths with a soft and tempered eloquence with which Julien
was inordinately delighted :

" i. England has not a guinea to help us with ; economy
and Hume are the fashion there. Even the saints will not
give us any money, and M. Brougham will make fun of us.

"2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to
embark on more than two campaigns without English gold ;
two campaigns will not be enough to dispose of the middle
classes.

" 3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France.
Without this, the monarchical principle in Europe will not
risk even two campaigns.

" The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as
self-evident, is this :

" The impossibility of forming an armed party in France
without the clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because
I will prove it to you, gentlemen. You must make every
sacrifice for the clergy.

" Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day
and by night, and guided by highly capable men established
far from these storms at three hundred leagues from your
frontiers "

" Ah, Rome, Rome ! " exclaimed the master of the house.

" Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily.
" Whatever more or less ingenious jokes may have been the

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY 393

fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying
that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome,
who has the ear of the lower classes.

" Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the
day appointed by their chiefs, and the people who after all
provide soldiers will be more touched by the voices of its
priests than by all the versifying in the whole world." (This
personality provoked some murmurs.)

" The clergy has a genius superior to yours, ' went on the
cardinal raising his voice. " All the progress that has been
made towards this essential point of having an armed party in
France has been made by us." At this juncture facts were
introduced. " Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendee ? "
etc., etc.

" So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless.
At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents
that there is no money to be had except for the cure. At
bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever
gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use
a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making
war means delivering those monsters of pride the men of
France from the menace of foreign intervention."

The cardinal had a favourable hearing. " M. de Nerval,"
he said, " will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates
and to no purpose."

At these words everybody got up and talked at the same
time. " I will be sent away again," thought Julien, but the
sapient president himself had forgottoti both the presence and
existence of Julien.

All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised.
It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at
M. the due de Retz's ball.

The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they
talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an
hour a little quiet was established.

Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone
and a singular voice :

" I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store
on being a minister.

" It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my
name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many

394 THE RED AND THE BLACK

moderates divide against us. I should therefore be willing to
retire ; but the ways of the Lord are only visible to a small
number ; but," he added, looking fixedly at the cardinal, " I
have a mission. Heaven has said : ' You will either loose
your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the
monarchy of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition
of the parliament of Louis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall
do."

He finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long
silence.

" What a good actor," thought Julien. He made his usual
mistake of ascribing too much intelligence to the people. Ex-
cited by the debates of so lively an evening, and above all by
the sincerity of the discussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment
believe in his mission. This man had great courage, but at
the same time no sense.

During the silence that followed the impressive words, " I
shall do it," midnight struck. Julien thought that the striking
of the clock had in it a certain element of funereal majesty.
He felt moved.

The discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy,
and above all with an incredible naivety. " These people will
have me poisoned," thought Julien at times. " How can they
say such things before a plebian."

They were still talking when two o'clock struck. The
master of the house had been sleeping for some time. M. de
la Mole was obliged to ring for new candles. M. de Nerval,
the minister, had left at the quarter to two, but not without
having repeatedly studied Julien's face in a mirror which was
at the minister's side. His departure had seemed to put
everybody at their ease.

While they were bringing new candles, the man in the
waistcoats, whispered to his neighbour : " God knows what
that man will say to the king. He may throw ridicule upon
us and spoil our future."

"One must own that he must possess an unusual self-
assurance, not to say impudence, to put in an appearance here
There were signs of it before he became a minister ; but a
portfolio changes everything and swamps all a man's interests ;
he must have felt its effect."

The minister had scarcely left before the general of

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY 395

Buonaparte closed his eyes. He now talked of his health
and his wounds, consulted his watch, and went away.

" I will wager," said the man in the waistcoats, " that the
general is running after the minister; he will apologise for
having' been here and pretend that he is our leader."

" Let us now deliberate, gentlemen," said the president,
after the sleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting
new candles. Let us leave off trying to persuade each other.
Let us think of the contents of the note which will be read
by our friends outside in forty-eight hours from now. We
have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de Nerval
has left us, we are at liberty to say ' what we do care for
ministers.' "

The cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval.

" Nothing is easier it seems to me than summing up our
position," said the young bishop of Agde, with the restrained
concentrated fire of the most exalted fanaticism. He had
kept silent up to this time ; his eye, which Julien had noticed
as being soft and calm at the beginniug, had become fiery
during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now
bubbling over like lava from Vesuvius.

"England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814," he
said, "and that was in not taking direct and personal measures
against Napoleon. As soon as that man had made dukes and
chamberlains, as soon as he had re-established the throne, the
mission that God had entrusted to him was finished. The
only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him. The
scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make
an end of tyrants" (at this point there were several Latin
quotations).

" To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be
sacrificed, it is Paris. What is the use of arming your five
hundred men in each department, a hazardous and inter-
minable enterprise? What is the good of involving France
in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone has
done the evil, with its journals and it salons. Let the new
Babylon perish.

" We must bring to an end the conflict between the church
and Paris. Such a catastrophe would even be in the worldly
interests of the throne. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a
word under Buonaparte ? Ask the cannon of Saint-Roch ? "

396 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Julien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock
in the morning.

The marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first
time in his life in conversation with Julien, his tone was
plaintive. He asked him for his word never to reveal the
excesses of zeal, that was his expression, of which chance
had just made him a witness. " Only mention it to our foreign
friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young
madmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is
overthrown, they will become cardinals and will take refuge
in Rome. As for us, we shall be massacred by the peasants
in our ch&teaus."

The secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's
full report of twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter
to five.

" I am dead tired," said the marquis, " as is quite obvious
from the lack of clearness at the end of this note ; I am more
dissatisfied with it than with anything I ever did in my whole
life. Look here, my friend," he added, "go and rest for some
hours, and as I am frightened you might be kidnapped, I shall
lock you up in your room."

The marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely
chateau at a good distance from Paris. There were strange
guests there whom Julien thought were priests. He was
given a passport which was made out in a fictitious name,
but indicated the real destination of his journey, which he
had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage
alone.

The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory.
Julien had recited the secret note to him several times but he
was very apprehensive of his being intercepted.

" Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply
travelling to kill time," he said affectionately to him when he
was leaving the salon. " Perhaps there was more than one
treacherous brother in this evening's meeting."

The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien
had scarcely got out of the marquis's sight before he forgot
his secret note and his mission, and only thought about
Mathilde's disdain.

At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster
came and told him that there were no horses. It was ten

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY 397

o'clock in the evening. Julien was very annoyed and asked
for supper. He walked in front of the door and gradually
without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did
not see any horses there.

"That man looked strange though," thought Julien to
himself. " He was scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes."

As one sees he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all
he heard. He thought of escaping after supper, and in order
to learn at any rate something about the surrounding country,
he left his room to go and warm himself at the kitchen fire.
He was overjoyed to find there the celebrated singer, signor
Geronimo.

The Neopolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had
had brought near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was
speaking more to himself than to the twenty dumbfounded
German peasants who surrounded him.

" Those people will be my ruin," he cried to Julien, " I
have promised to sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven
sovereign princes have gone there to hear me. Let us go
and take the air," he added, meaningly.

When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it
was impossible to be overheard, he said to Julien :

" Do you know the real truth, the postmaster is a scoundrel.
When I went out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little
ragamuffin who told me everything. There are twelve horses
in the stable at the other end of the village. They want to
stop some courier."

" Really," said Julien innocently.

Discovering the fraud was not enough ; the thing was to get
away, but Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in
doing this.

" Let us wait for daybreak," said the singer at last, " they
are mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they
suspect. We will order a good breakfast to-morrow morning,
we will go for a walk while they are getting it ready, we
will then escape, we will hire horses, and gain the next
station."

" And how about your luggage?" said Julien, who thought
perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept
him. They had to have supper and go to bed. Julien was
still in his first sleep when he was woken up with a start by

398 THE RED AND THE BLACK

the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with
utmost freedom.

He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern.
The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had
had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a
man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could
see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black
and very tight.

" It's a cassock," he said to himself and he softly seized the
little pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

" Don't be frightened of his waking up, cure," said the post-
master, "the wine that has been served him was the stuff
prepared by yourself."

" I can't find any trace of papers," answered the cure. " A
lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a
young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one
who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary."

The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his
travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves.
Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very
desirous of doing so . . . "I should only be a fool," he said
to himself, " I should compromise my mission." " He is not
a diplomatist," said the priest after searching his coat. He
went away and did well to do so.

" It will be a bad business for him," Julien was saying to
himself, " if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite
well come to stab me, and I won't put up with that."

The cure turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He
was inordinately astonished, he was the abbe Castanede. As
a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point
of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first
that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with
an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most
cowardly villains; " But my mission," he said to himself.

The cure and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour
afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He
called out and woke up the whole house.

" I am poisoned," he exclaimed, " I am suffering horribly ! "
He wanted an excuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found
him half suffocated by the laudanum that had been contained
in the wine.

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY 399

Julien had been apprehensive of some trick of this charade
and had supped on some chocolate which he had brought
from Paris. He could not wake Geronimo up sufficiently to
induce him to leave.

"If they were to give me the whole kingdon of Naples,"
said the singer, " I would not now give up the pleasure of
sleeping."

" But the seven sovereign princes ? "

" Let them wait."

Julien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great
personage without other incident. He wasted a whole
morning in vainly soliciting an audience. Fortunately about
four o'clock the duke wanted to take the air. Julien saw him
go out on foot and he did not hesitate to ask him for alms.
When at two yards' distance from the great personage he
pulled out the Marquis de la Mole's watch and exhibited it
ostentatiously. "Follow me at a distance? said the man
without looking at him.

At a quarter of a league's distance the duke suddenly entered
a little coffee-house. It was in a room of this low class inn
that Julien had the honour of reciting his four pages to the
duke. When he had finished he was told to "start again and
go more slowly."

The prince took notes. " Reach the next posting station
on foot. Leave your luggage and your carriage here. Get to
Strasbourg as best you can and at half-past twelve on the
twenty-second of the month (it was at present the tenth) come
to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for half-an-hour.
Silence ! "

These were the only words which Julien heard. They
sufficed to inspire him with the highest admiration. " That is
the way," he thought, " that real business is done ; what would
this great statesman say if he were to listen to the impassioned
ranters heard three days ago ? "

Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he
would have nothing to do there. He made a great detour.
" If that devil of an abbe Castanede has recognised me he is
not the kind of man to loose track of me easily . . . And
how he would revel in making a fool of me, and causing my
mission to fail."

Fortunately the Abbe Castanede, who was chief of the

400 THE RED AND THE BLACK

congregational police on all the northern frontier had not
recognised him. And the Strasbourg Jesuits, although very
zealous, never gave a thought to observing Julien, who with
his cross and his blue tail-coat looked like a young military
man, very much engrossed in his own personal appearance.

CHAPTER LIV

STRASBOURG

Fascination ! Love gives thee all his love, energy and
all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only his en-
chanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which are outside
thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was made to say
" With all her angelic beauty and her sweet weaknesses
she is absolutely mine ! There she is, quite in my
power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in order to
ravish a man's heart." Ode of Schiller,

Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and
tried to distract himself by thoughts of military glory and
patriotic devotion. Was he in love then ? he could not tell,
he only felt in his tortured soul that Mathilde was the absolute
mistress both of his happiness and of his imagination. He
needed all the energy of his character to keep himself from
sinking into despair. It was out of his power to think of any-
thing unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His ambition
and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him
from the sentiments which madame de Renal had inspired.
Mathilde was all-absorbing ; she loomed large over his whole
future.

Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same
individual whom we remember to have been so presumptuous
and haughty at Verrieres, had fallen into an excess of grotesque
modesty.

Three days ago he would only have been too pleased to
have killed the abbe Castanede, and now, at Strasbourg, if a
child had picked a quarrel with him he would have thought
the child was in the right. In thinking again about the
adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he always
thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was

26

4 o2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

that the same powerful imagination which had formerly been
continuously employed in painting a successful future in the
most brilliant colours had now been transformed into his
implacable enemy.

The absolute solicitude of a traveller's life increased the
ascendancy of this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend
would have been ! But Julien said to himself, " Is there a
single heart which beats with affection for me ? And even if
I did have a friend, would not honour enjoin me to eternal
silence ? "

He was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a
market town on the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by
Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr. A German peasant showed
him the little brooks, roads and islands of the Rhine, which
have acquired a name through the courage of these great
generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand,
while he held unfolded in his right the superb map which
adorns the Memoirs of the Marshal Saint Cyr. A merry
exclamation made him lift his head.

It was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had
initiated him some months before into the elementary rules of
high fatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just
arrived at Strasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had
never read a single line in his whole life about the siege of
1796, began to explain it all to Julien. The German peasant
looked at him in astonishment ; for he knew enough French
to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was
making. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the
peasant's thoughts. He was looking in astonishment at the
handsome young man and admiring his grace in sitting a
horse.

" What a lucky temperament," he said to himself, " and how
his trousers suit him and how elegantly his hair is cut ! Alas,
if I had been like him, it might have been that she would not
have come to dislike me after loving me for three days."

When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to
Julien, " You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess
that principle of gravity which I enjoined upon you in London*
A melancholy manner cannot be good form. What is wanted
is an air of boredom. If you are melancholy, it is because you
lack something, because you have failed in something."

STRASBOURG 403

" That means showing one's own inferiority ; if, on the other
hand you are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful
attempt to please you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear
friend, the enormity of your mistake."

Julien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was
listening to them.

" Good," said the prince, " that shows grace and a noble
disdain, very good ! " And he put his horse to the gallop.
Full of a stupid admiration, Julien followed him.

" Ah ! if I have been like that, she would not have preferred
Croisenois to me ! " The more his reason was offended by the
grotesque affectations of the prince the more he despised
himself for not having them. It was impossible for self-
disgust to be carried further.

The prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to
him as they re-entered Strasbourg. " Come, my dear fellow,
have you lost all your money, or perhaps you are in love with
some little actress.

" The Russians copy French manners, but always at an
interval of fifty years. They have now reached the age of
Louis XV."

These jests about love brought the tears to Julien's eyes.
" Why should I not consult this charming man," he suddenly
said to himself.

" Well, yes, my dear friend," he said to the prince, " you
see in me a man who is very much in love and jilted into the
bargain. A charming woman who lives in a neighbouring
town has left me stranded here after three passionate days,
and the change kills me,"

Using fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde's
conduct and character.

Ji You need not finish," said Korasoff. " In order to give
you confidence in your doctor, I will finish the story you have
confided to me. This young woman's husband enjoys an
enormous income, or even more probably, she belongs herself
to the high nobility of the district. She must be proud about
something."

Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to
speak. " Very good," said the prince, "here are three fairly
bitter pills that you will take without delay.

" 1. See madame What is her name, every day?"

404 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" Madame de Dubois."

" What a name ! " said the prince bursting into laughter.
" But forgive me, you find it sublime. Your tactics must be to
see Madame de Dubois every day ; above all do not appear to
be cold and piqued. Remember the great principle of your
century : be the opposite of what is expected. Be exactly as
you were the week before you were honoured by her favours."

" Ah ! I was calm enough then," exclaimed Julien in despair,
" I thought I was taking pity on her. . . ."

" The moth is burning itself at the candle," continued the
prince using a metaphor as old as the world.

" i. You will see her every day.

" 2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but
without manifesting a passion, do you understand ? I do not
disguise from you that your role is difficult ; you are playing a
part, and if she realises you are playing it you are lost. "

" She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall
be lost," said Julien sadly.

" No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame
de Dubois is preoccupied with herself as are all women who
have been favoured by heaven either with too much pedigree or
too much money. She contemplates herself instead of contem-
plating you, consequently she does not know you. During
the two or three fits of love into which she managed to work
herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the hero of
her dreams, and not the man you really are.

" But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are
you an absolute novice ?

" Oddslife ! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming
black cravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson
of Burlington Street. Be kind enough to take it and throw
far away that awful black cord which you are wearing round
your neck."

" And now," continued the prince as they came out of the
shop of the first hosier of Strasbourg, " what is the society in
which madame de Dubois lives ? Great God, what a name,
don't be angry, my dear Sorel, I can't help it. . . . Now,
whom are you going to pay court to ? "

"To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich
stocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and
they please me infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest

STRASBOURG 45

place in the society of the district, but in the midst of all her
greatness she blushes and becomes positively confused if any-
one starts talking about trade or shops. And, unfortu-
nately, her father was one of the best known merchants in
Strasbourg."

" So," said the prince with a laugh, " you are sure that when
one talks about trade your fair lady thinks about herself and
not about you. This silly weakness is divine and ex-
tremely useful, it will prevent you from yielding to a single
moment's folly when near her sparkling eyes. Success is
assured."

Julien was thinking of madame the marechale de Fervaques
who often came to the h6tel de la Mole. She was a beautiful
foreigner who had married the marechal a year before his
death. The one object of her whole life seemed to be to
make people forget that she was the daughter of a manufacturer.
In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed herself at
the head of the party of piety.

Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not
have given to have possessed his affectations ! The conversa-
tion between the two friends was interminable. Korasoff was
delighted : No Frenchman had ever listened to him for so
long. "So I have succeeded at last," said the prince to
himself complacently, " in getting a proper hearing and that too
through giving lessons to my master."

" So we are quite agreed," he repeated to Julien for the tenth
time. "When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the
daughter of the Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence
of madame de Dubois, not a trace of passion. But on the
other hand be ardently passionate when you write. Reading
a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest pleasure.
It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares
to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a
day."

"Never, never," said Julien despondently, " I would rather be
ground in a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a
corpse, my dear fellow, hope nothing from me. Let me die
by the road side."

" And who is talking about making up phrases ? I have
got six volumes of copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have
letters to suit every variation of feminine character, includ-

406 THE RED AND THE BLACK

ing the most highly virtuous. Did not Kalisky pay court
at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues from London,
you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of
England?"

Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two
o'clock in the morning.

The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and
two days afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three
carefully numbered love-letters intended for the most sublime
and the most melancholy virtue.

"The reason why there is not fifty-four," said the prince
" is because Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But
what does it matter to you, if you are badly treated by the
stocking-merchant's daughter since you only wish to produce
an impression upon madame de Dubois heart."

They went out riding every day, the prince was mad on
Julien. Not knowing how else to manifest his sudden friend-
ship, he finished up by offering him the hand of one of his
cousins, a rich Moscow heiress ; " and once married," he
added, " my influence and that cross of yours will get you
made a Colonel within two years."

" But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from
it."

"What does it matter?" said the prince, "didn't he invent
it. It is still the first in Europe by a long way."

Julien was on the point of accepting ; but his duty called
him back to the great personage. When he left Korasoff he
promised to write. He received the answer to the secret note
which he had brought, and posted towards Paris ; but he had
scarcely been alone for two successive days before leaving
France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than death.
" I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me," he said to
himself, "and I will follow his advice.

" After all the art of seduction is his speciality. He has
thought about nothing else except that alone for more than
fifteen years, for he is now thirty.

" One can't say that he lacks intelligence ; he is subtle and
cunning; enthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a
character. He is an attorney : an additional reason for his
not making a mistake.

" I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques.

STRASBOURG 407

" It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at
her beautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which
have loved me more than anyone in the world.

" She is a foreigner ; she is a new character to observe.

" I feel mad, and as though I were going to the devil. I
must follow the advice of a friend and not trust myself."

CHAPTER LV

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE

But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence and circum-
spection I shall no longer find it a pleasure. Lope de Vega.

As soon as our hero had returned to Paris and had come out
of the study of the marquis de La Mole, who seemed very dis-
pleased with the despatches that were given him, he rushed off
for the comte Altamira. This noble foreigner combined with
the advantage of having once been condemned to death a very
grave demeanour together with the good fortune of a devout
temperament ; these two qualities, and more than anything, the
comte's high birth, made an especial appeal to madame de
Fervaques who saw a lot of him.

j uhen solemnly confessed to him that he was very much in
love with her.

" Her virtue is the purest and the highest," answered
Altamira, " only it is a little Jesuitical and dogmatic.

" There are days when, though I understand each of the
expressions which she makes use of, I never understand the
whole sentence. She often makes me think that I do not
know French as well as I am said to. But your acquaintance
with her will get you talked about ; it will give you weight in
the world. But let us go to Bustos," said Count Altamira
who had a methodical turn of mind; "he once paid court to
madame la marechale."

Don Diego Bustos had the matter explained to him at
length, while he said nothing, like a barrister in his chambers.
He had a big monk-like face with black moustaches and an
inimitable gravity ; he was, however, a good carbonaro.

" I understand," he said to Julien at last. " Has the
marechale de Fervaques had lovers, or has she not? Have

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE 409

you consequently any hope of success ? That is the question.
I don't mind telling you, for my own part, that I have failed.
Now that I am no more piqued I reason it out to myself in
this way ; she is often bad tempered, and as I will tell you in a
minute, she is quite vindictive.

" I fail to detect in her that bilious temperament which is the
sign of genius, and shows as it were a veneer of passion over
all its actions. On the contrary, she owes her rare beauty
and her fresh complexion to the phlegmatic, tranquil character
of the Dutch."

Julien began to lose patience with the phlegmatic slowness
of the imperturbable Spaniard ; he could not help giving vent
to some monosyllables from time to time.

" Will you listen to me ? " Don Diego Bustos gravely said
to him.

"Forgive the furia franchese ; I am all ears," said Julien.

" The marechale de Fervaques then is a great hater ; she
persecutes ruthlessly people she has never seen advocates,
poor devils of men of letters who have composed songs like
Colle, you know ?

" Jai la marotte
D'aimer Marote, etc."

And Julien had to put up with the whole quotation.

The Spaniard was very pleased to get a chance of singing
in French.

That divine song was never listened to more impatiently.
When it was finished Don Diego said " The marechale pro-
cured the dismissal of the author of the song :

" Un jour l'amour au cabaret."

Julien shuddered lest he should want to sing it. He con-
tented himself with analysing it. As a matter of fact, it was
blasphemous and somewhat indecent.

" When the marechale become enraged against that song,"
said Don Diego, " I remarked to her that a woman of her rank
ought not to read all the stupid things that are published.
Whatever progress piety and gravity may make France will
always have a cabaret literature.

" ' Be careful,' I said to madame de Fervaques when she had

4io THE RED AND THE BLACK

succeeded in depriving the author, a poor devil on halt-pay, of
a place worth eighteen hundred francs a year, ' you have
attacked this rhymster with your own arms, he may answer
you with his rhymes ; he will make a song about virtue. The
gilded salons will be on your side ; but people who like to
laugh will repeat his epigrams.' Do you know, monsieur, what
the merechale answered ? ' Let all Paris come and see me
walking to my martyrdom for the sake of the Lord. It will be
a new spectacle for France. The people will learn to respect
the quality. It will be the finest day of my life.' Her eyes
never looked finer."

"And she has superb ones," exclaimed Julien.
:< I see that you are in love. Further," went on Don Diego
Bustos gravely, " she has not the bilious constitution which
causes vindictiveness. If, however, she likes to do harm, it is
because she is unhappy, I suspect some secret misfortune.
May it not be quite well a case of prude tired of her role ? "
The Spaniard looked at him in silence for a good minute.
" That's the whole point," he added gravely, " and that's
what may give you ground for some hope. I have often re-
flected about it during the two years that I was her very
humble servant. All your future, my amorous sir, depends on
this great problem. Is she a prude tired of her role and only
malicious because she is unhappy?"

" Or," said Altamira emerging at last from his deep silence,
" can it be as I have said twenty times before, simply a case
of French vanity ; the memory of her father, the celebrated
cloth merchant, constitutes the unhappiness of this frigid
melancholy nature. The only happiness she could find would
be to live in Toledo and to be tortured by a confessor who
would show her hell wide open every day."

" Altamira informs me you are one of us," said Don Diego,
whose demeanour was growing graver and graver to Julien as
he went out. " You will help us one day in re-winning our
liberty, so I would like to help you in this little amusement.
It is right that you should know the marechale's style ; here
are four letters in her hand-writing."

" I will copy them out," exclaimed Julien, " and bring them
back to you."

" And you will never let anyone know a word of what we
have been saying."

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE 411

" Never, on my honour," cried Julien.

" Well, God help you," added the Spaniard, and he silently
escorted Altamira and Julien as far as the staircase.

This somewhat amused our hero ; he was on the point of
smiling. " So we have the devout Altamira," he said to him-
self, " aiding me in an adulterous enterprise."

During Don Diego's solemn conversation Julien had been
attentive to the hours struck by the clock of the Hotel d'
Aligre.

The dinner hour was drawing near, he was going to see
Mathilde again. He went in and dressed with much care.

" Mistake No. 1," he said to himself as he descended the
staircase : " I must follow the prince's instructions to the
letter."

He went up to his room again and put on a travelling suit
which was as simple as it could be. " All I have to do now,"
he thought, " is to keep control of my expression." It was
only half-past five and they dined at six. He thought of
going down to the salon which he found deserted. He was
moved to the point of tears at the sight of the blue sofa. " I
must make an end of this foolish sensitiveness," he said angrily,
" it will betray me." He took up a paper in order to keep
Iimself in countenance and passed three or four times from
soe salon into the garden.

tnd was only when he was well concealed by a large oak
atiwtwas trembling all over, that he ventured to raise his eyes
et mademoiselle de la Mole's window. It was hermetically

aled; he was on the point of falling and remained for a long
hme leaning against the oak ; then with a staggering step he
hent to have another look at the gardener's ladder.

The chain which he had once forced asunder in, alas, such
different circumstances had not yet been repaired. Carried
away by a moment of madness, Julien pressed it to his lips.

After having wandered about for a long time between the
salon and the garden, Julien felt horribly tired ; he was now
feeling acutely the effects of a first success. My eyes will be
expressionless and will not betray me ! The guests gradually
arrived in the salon ; the door never opened without instilling
anxiety into Julien's heart.

They sat down at table. Mademoiselle de la Mole, always
faithful to her habit of keeping people waiting, eventually

4i2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

appeared. She blushed a great deal on seeing Julien, she had
not been told of his arrival. In accordance with Prince
Korasoff's recommendation, Julien looked at his hands.
They were trembling. Troubled though he was beyond
words by this discovery, he was sufficiently happy to look
merely tired.

M. de la Mole sang his praises. The marquise spoke to
him a minute afterwards and complimented him on his tired
appearance. Julien said to himself at every minute, " I ought
not to look too much at mademoiselle de la Mole, I ought not
to avoid looking at her too much either. I must appear as I

was eight days before my unhappiness " He had

occasion to be satisfied with his success and remained in the
salon. Paying attention for the first time to the mistress of
the house, he made every effort to make the visitors speak
and to keep the conversation alive.

His politeness was rewarded; madame la marechale de
Fervaques was announced about eight o'clock. Julien retired
and shortly afterwards appeared dressed with the greatest
care. Madame de la Mole was infinitely grateful to him for
this mark of respect and made a point of manifesting her
satisfaction by telling madame de Fervaques about his journey.
Julien established himself near the marechale in such a posi-
tion that Mathilde could not notice his eyes. In this position
he lavished in accordance with all the rules in the art of love,
the most abject admiration on madame de Fervaques. The
first of the 53 letters with which Prince Korasoff had presented
him commenced with a tirade on this sentiment.

The marechale announced that she was going to the Opera-
Bouffe. Julien rushed there. He ran across the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis who took him into a box occupied by Messieurs
the Gentlemen of the Chamber, just next to madame de
Fervaques's box. Julien constantly looked at her. " I must
keep a siege-journal," he said to himself as he went back to the
hotel, " otherwise I shall forget my attacks." He wrote two or
three pages on this boring theme, and in this way achieved
the admirable result of scarcely thinking at all about
mademoiselle de la Mole.

Mathilde had almost forgotten him during his journey.
M He is simply a commonplace person after all," she thought,
" his name will always recall to me the greatest mistake in my

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE 413

life. I must honestly go back to all my ideas about prudence
and honour ; a woman who forgets them has everything to
lose." She showed herself inclined to allow the contract with
the marquis de Croisenois, which had been prepared so long
ago, to be at last concluded. He was mad with joy; he
would have been very much astonished had he been told that
there was an element of resignation at the bottom of those
feelings of Mathilde which made him so proud.

All mademoiselle de la Mole's ideas changed when she saw
Julien. " As a matter of fact he is my husband," she said to
herself. " If I am sincere in my return to sensible notions, he
is clearly the man I ought to marry."

She was expecting importunities and airs of unhappiness on
the part of Julien ; she commenced rehearsing her answers,
for he would doubtless try to address some words to her when
they left the dinner table. Far from that he remained
stubbornly in the salon and did not even look in the direction
of the garden, though God knows what pain that caused him !

" It is better to have this explanation out all at once,"
thought mademoiselle de la Mole ; she went into the garden
alone, Julien did not appear. Mathilde went and walked near
the salon window. She found him very much occupied in
describing to madame de Fervaques the old ruined chateau
which crown the banks along the Rhine and invest them with
so much atmosphere. He was beginning to acquit himself
with some credit in that sentimental picturesque jargon which
is called wit in certain salons. Prince Korasoff would have
been very proud if he had been at Paris. This evening was
exactly what he had predicted.

He would have approved the line of conduct which Julien
followed on the subsequent days.

An intrigue among the members of the secret government
was going to bestow a few blue ribbons ; madame marechale
de Fervaques was insisting on her great uncle being made a
chevalier of the order. The marquis de la Mole had the same
pretensions for his father-in-law ; they joined forces and the
marechale came to the hotel de la Mole nearly every day. It
was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was going
to be a minister. He was offering to the Camarilla a very
ingenious plan for the annihilation of the charter within three
years without any disturbance.

4M THE RED AND THE BLACK

If M. de la Mole became a minister, Julien could hope for
a bishopric : but all these important interests seemed to be
veiled and hazy. His imagination only perceived them very
vaguely, and so to speak, in the far distance. The awful un-
happiness which was making him into a madman could find
no other interest in life except the character of his relations
with mademoiselle de la Mole. He calculated that after five
or six careful years he would manage to get himself loved
again.

This cold brain had been reduced, as one sees, to a state
of complete disorder. Out of all the qualities which had
formerly distinguished him, all that remained was a little
firmness. He was literally faithful to the line of conduct
which prince Korasoff had dictated, and placed himself every
evening near madame Fervaques' armchair, but he found it
impossible to think of a word to say to her.

The strain of making Mathilde think that he had recovered
exhausted his whole moral force, and when he was with the
marechale he seemed almost lifeless ; even his eyes had lost
all their fire, as in cases of extreme physical suffering.

As madame de la Mole's views were invariably a counterpart
of the opinions of that husband of hers who could make her
into a Duchess, she had been singing Julien's praises for some
days.

HAPTER LVI

MORAL LOVE

There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express ;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.

Don Juan, c. xiii. st. 84.

" There is an element of madness in all this family's way of
looking at things," thought the marechale; "they are in-
fatuated with their young abbe, whose only accomplishment
is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is
true."

Julien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an
almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a
scrupulous politeness ; and, what is more, announces at the
same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame
de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any
unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack
of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded
the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral
drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely
prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself.
Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt ; her
favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon,
especially the genealogical part.

Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light
suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He
got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such
a way as not to see Mathilde.

4 i6 THE RED AND THE BLACK

Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding him
self from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the
little table near the marechale's armchair. Julien had a fairly
close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat.

Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened
him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy.
He talked, and talked very well.

He was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to
produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became
so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not
manage to understand a word he said.

This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to
follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty
religion, and Jesuitism, the marechale would have immediately
given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it
was to regenerate the age.

" Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la
Mole, " to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques,
I shall not listen to him any more." She kept her resolution
during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had
difficulty in doing so.

At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accom-
pany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the
staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde
ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep. She
felt calmed by this thought : " the very things which I despise
in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the
eyes of the marechale."

As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy ;
his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather poitfolio in
which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters
which he had presented to him. Julien saw a nott at the
bottom of the first letter : No. i is sent eight days after the
first meeting.

" I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. " It is quite a long
time since I met madame de Fervaques." He immediately
began to copy out this first love letter. It was a homily packed
with moral platitudes and deadly dull. Julien was fortunate
enough to fall asleep at the second page.

Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad
daylight as he lent on his desk. The most painful moments

MORAL LOVE 417

in his life were those when he woke up every morning to
realise his unhappiness. On this particular day he finished
copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter. " Is it
possible," he said to himself, " that there ever lived a young
man who actually wrote like that." He counted several
sentences of nine lines each. At the bottom of the original
he noticed a pencilled note. "These letters are delivered
personally, on horseback, black cravat, blue tail-coat. You
give the letter to the porter with a contrite air ; expression of
profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry
your eyes furtively and speak to her."

All this was duly carried out.

" I am taking a very bold course ! " thought Julien as he
came out of the hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for
Korasoff. To think of daring to write to so virtuous a
celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost contempt, and
nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy
that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to
load with ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself.
If I believed in myself, I would commit some crime to distract
myself."

The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the
stable was the happiest he had experienced for a whole month.
Korasoff had expressly forbidden him to look at the mistress
who had left him, on any pretext whatsoever. But the step
of that horse, which she knew so well, and Julien's way of
knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to call a
man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-
curtain. The muslin was so light that Julien could see
through it. By looking under the brim of his hat in a certain
way, he could get a view of Mathilde's figure without seeing
her eyes. "Consequently," he said to himself, "she cannot
see mine, and that is not really looking at her."

In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him,
exactly as though she had never received the philosophic
mystical and religious dissertation which he had given to her
porter in the morning with so melancholy an air. Chance
had shown Julien on the preceding day how to be eloquent ;
he placed himself in such a position that he could see
Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute
after the marechale's arrival; this involved abandoning her

27

418 THE RED AND THE BLACK

usual associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by
this new caprice : his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness
of Julien's agony.

This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an
angel, and inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation
will insinuate itself even into those hearts which serve as a
temple for the most august virtue, the marechale said to her-
self as she got into her carriage, " Madame de la Mole is
right, this young priest has distinction. My presence must
have overawed him at first. As a matter of fact, the whole
tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see nothing but
instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in great
need of the chills of age. This young man must have
managed to appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I
fear very much that this request of his in his letter for me to
enlighten him with my advice, is really nothing less than an,
as yet, unconscious sentiment.

" Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that !
What makes me consider this a good omen is the difference
between his style and that of the young people whose letters
I have had an opportunity of seeing. One cannot avoid
recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much con-
viction in the prose of this young acolyte ; he has no doubt
the sweet virtue of a Massillon."

CHAPTER LVII

THE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH

Services ! talents ! merits ! bah ! belong to a coterie.

Telemaque.

The idea of a bishopric had thus become associated with
the idea of Julien in the mind of a woman, who would sooner
or later have at her disposal the finest places in the Church
of France. This idea had not struck Julien at all; at the
present time his thoughts were strictly limited to his actual
unhappiness. Everything tended to intensify it. The sight
of his room, for instance, had become unbearable. When he
came back in the evening with his candle, each piece of
furniture and each little ornament seemed to become articulate,
and to announce harshly some new phase of his unhappiness.

" I have a hard task before me to-day," he said to himself
as he came in with a vivacity which he had not experienced
for a long time; "let us hope that the second letter will be
as boring as the first."

It was more so. What he was copying seemed so absurd
that he finished up by transcribing it line for line without
thinking of the sense.

" It is even more bombastic," he said to himself, " than
those official documents of the treaty of Munster which my
professor of diplomacy made me copy out at London."

It was only then that he remembered madame de Fervaque's
letters which he had forgotten to give back to the grave
Spaniard Don Diego Bustos. He found them. They were
really almost as nonsensical as those of the young Russian
nobleman. Their vagueness was unlimited. It meant every-
thing and nothing. , " It's the JEoY\z.w harp of style," thought
Tulien. "The only real thing I see in the middle of all these

420 THE RED AND THE BLACK

lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, infinity, etc., is an
abominable fear of ridicule."

The monologue which we have just condensed was repeated
for fifteen days on end. Falling off to sleep as he copied out
a sort of commentary on the Apocalypse, going with a
melancholy expression to deliver it the following day, taking
his horse back to the stable in the hope of catching sight
of Mathilde's dress, working, going in the evening to the
opera on those evenings when madame de Fervaques did not
come to the hdtel de la Mole, such were the monotonous
events in Julien's life. His life had more interest, when
madame la Fervaques visited the marquise ; he could then
catch a glimpse of Mathilde's eyes underneath a feather of
the marechale's hat, and he would wax eloquent. His pictur-
esque and sentimental phrases began to assume a style, which
was both more striking and more elegant.

He quite realised that what he said was absurd in Mathilde's
eyes, but he wished to impress her by the elegance of his
diction. " The falser my speeches are the more I ought to
please," thought Julien, and he then had the abominable
audacity to exaggerate certain elements in his own character.
He soon appreciated that to avoid appearing vulgar in the
eyes of the marechale it was necessary to eschew simple and
rational ideas. He would continue on these lines, or would
cut short his grand eloquence according as he saw appreciation
or indifference in the eyes of the two great ladies whom he
had set out to please.

Taking it all round, his life was less awful than when his
days were passed in inaction.

" But," he said to himself one evening, " here I am copying
out the fifteenth of these abominable dissertations ; the first
fourteen have been duly delivered to the marechale's porter.
I shall have the honour of filling all the drawers in her
escritoire. And yet she treats me as though I never wrote.
What can be the end of all this ? Will my constancy bore
her as much as it does me ? I must admit that that Russian
friend of Korasoff's who was in love with the pretty Quakeress
of Richmond, was a terrible man in his time ; no one could
be more overwhelming."

Like all mediocre individuals, who chance to come into
contact with the manoeuvres of a great general, Julien under-

. THE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH 421

stood nothing of the attack executed by the young Russian
on the heart of the young English girl. The only purpose
of the first forty letters was to secure forgiveness for the bold-
ness of writing at all. The sweet person, who perhaps lived
a life of inordinate boredom, had to be induced to contract
the habit of receiving letters, which were perhaps a little less
insipid that her everyday life.

One morning a letter was delivered to Julien. He recog-
nised the arms of madame la Fervaques, and broke the seal
with an eagerness which would have seemed impossible to
him some days before. It was only an. invitation to dinner.

He rushed to prince KorasofFs instructions. Unfortunately
the young Russian had taken it into his head to be as
flippant as Dorat, just when he should have been simple and
intelligible ! Julien was not able to form any idea of the moral
position which he ought to take up at the marechale's dinner.

The salon was extremely magnificent and decorated like the
gallery de Diane in the Tuilleries with panelled oil-paintings.

There were some light spots on these pictures. Julien
learnt later that the mistress of the house had thought the
subject somewhat lacking in decency and that she had had
the pictures corrected. " What a moral century ! " he thought.

He noticed in this salon three of the persons who had been
present at the drawing up of the secret note. One of them,

my lord bishop of the marechale's uncle had the

disposition of the ecclesiastical patronage, and could, it was
said, refuse his niece nothing. " What immense progress I
have made," said Julien to himself with a melancholy smile,
" and how indifferent I am to it. Here I am dining with the
famous bishop of ."

The dinner was mediocre and the conversation wearisome.

" It's like the small talk in a bad book," thought Julien.
" All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly
tackled. After listening for three minutes one asks oneself
which is greater the speaker's bombast, or his abominable
ignorance ? "

The reader has doubtless forgotten the little man of letters
named Tanbeau, who was the nephew of the Academician,
and intended to be professor, who seemed entrusted with the
task of Doisoning the salon of the hotel de la Mole with his
base cahmnies.

4*2 THE RED AND THE BLACK

It was this little man who gave Julien the first inkling that
though madame de Fervaques did not answer, she might quite
well take an indulgent view of the sentiment which dictated
them. M. Tanbeau's sinister soul was lacerated by the
thought of Julien's success ; " but since, on the other hand, a
man of merit cannot be in two places at the same time any
more than a fool," said the future professor to himself, "if
Sorel becomes the lover of the sublime marechale, she will
obtain some lucrative position for him in the church, and I
shall be rid of him in the hdtel de la Mole."

M. the abbe Pirard addressed long sermons to Julien
concerning his success at the hotel de Fervaques. There was
a sectarian jealousy between the austere Jansenist and the
salon of the virtuous marechale which was Jesuitical, re-
actionary, and monarchical.

CHAPTER LVIII

MANON LESCAUT

Accordingly once he was thoroughly convinced of
the asinine stupidity of the prior, he would usually
succeed well enough by calling white black, and black
white. Lickiemberg.

The Russian instructions peremptorily forbade the writer
from ever contradicting in conversation the recipient of the
letters. No pretext could excuse any deviation from the role
of that most estatic admiration. The letters were always based
on that hypothesis.

One evening at the opera, when in madame de Fervaques'
box, Julien spoke of the ballet of Manon Lescaut in the most
enthusiastic terms. His only reason for talking in that strain
was the fact that he thought it insignificant.

The marechale said that the ballet was very inferior to the
abbe Prevost's novel.

"The idea," thought Julien, both surprised and amused,
" of so highly virtuous a person praising a novel ! Madame
de Fervaques used to profess two or three times a week the
most absolute contempt for those writers, who, by means of
their insipid works, try to corrupt a youth which is, alas ! only
too inclined to the errors of the senses."

" Manon Lescaut" continued the marechale, " is said to
be one of the best of this immoral and dangerous type of
book. The weaknesses and the deserved anguish of a criminal
heart are, they say, portrayed with a truth which is not lacking
in depth ; a fact which does not prevent your Bonaparte
from stating at St. Helena that it is simply a novel written
for lackeys."

The word Bonaparte restored to Julien all the activity of
his mind. " They have tried to ruin me with the marechale ;

424 THE RED AND THE BLACK

they have told her of my enthusiasm for Napoleon. This
fact has sufficiently piqued her to make her yield to the
temptation to make me feel it." This discovery amused him
all the evening, and rendered him amusing. As he took leave
of the marechale in the vestibule of the opera, she said to him,
" Remember, monsieur, one must not like Bonaparte if you
like me ; at the best he can only be accepted as a necessity
imposed by Providence. Besides, the man did not have a
sufficiently supple soul to appreciate masterpieces of art."

" When you like me," Julien kept on repeating to himself,
" that means nothing or means everything. Here we have
mysteries of language which are beyond us poor provincials."
And he thought a great deal about madame de Renal, as he
copied out an immense letter destined for the marechale.

" How is it," she said to him the following day, with an
assumed indifference which he thought was clumsily assumed,
' that you talk to me about London and Richmond in a letter
which you wrote last night, I think, when you came back
from the opera ? "

Julien was very embarrassed. He had copied line by line
without thinking about what he was writing, and had apparently
forgotten to substitute Paris and Saint Cloud for the words
London and Richmond which occurred in the original. He
commenced two or three sentences, but found it impossible to
finish them. He felt on the point of succumbing to a fit of
idiotic laughter. Finally by picking his words he succeeded
in formulating this inspiration : " Exalted as I was by the
discussion of the most sublime and greatest interests of the
human soul, my own soul may have been somewhat absent in
my letter to you."

" I am making an impression," he said to himself, " so I
can spare myself the boredom of the rest of the evening." He
left the hotel de Fervaques at a run. In the evening he had
another look at the original of the letter which he had copied
out on the previous night, and soon came to the fatal place
where the young Russian made mention of London and of
Richmond. Julien was very astonished to find this letter
almost tender.

It had been the contrast between the apparent lightness of
his conversation, and the sublime and almost apocalyptic
profundity of his letters which had marked him out for

MANON LESCAUT 425

favour. The marechale was particularly pleased by the
longness of the sentences ; this was very far from being that
sprightly style which that immoral man Voltaire had brought
into fashion. Although our hero made every possible human
effort to eliminate from his conversation any symptom of good
sense, it still preserved a certain anti-monarchical and blasphem-
ous tinge which did not escape madame de Fervaques.
Surrounded as she was by persons who, though eminently
moral, had very often not a single idea during a whole evening,
this lady was profoundly struck by anything resembling a
novelty, but at the same time she thought she owed it to
herself to be offended by it. She called this defect : Keeping
the imprint of the lightness of the age.

But such salons are only worth observing when one has a
favour to procure. The reader doubtless shares all the ennui
of the colourless life which Julien was leading. This period
represents the steppes of our journey.

Mademoiselle de la Mole needed to exercise her self-
control to avoid thinking of Julien during the whole period
filled by the de Fervaques episode. Her soul was a prey to
violent battles; sometimes she piqued herself on despising
that melancholy young man, but his conversation captivated
her in spite of herself. She was particularly astonished by his
absolute falseness. He did not say a single word to the
marechale which was not a lie, or at any rate, an abominable
travesty of his own way of thinking, which Mathilde knew so
perfectly in every phase. This Macchiavellianiasm impressed
her. " What subtlety," she said to herself. " What a
difference between the bombastic coxcombs, or the common
rascals like Tanbeau who talk in the same strain."

Nevertheless Julien went through awful days. It was only
to accomplish the most painful of duties that he put in a daily
appearance in the marechale's salon.

The strain of playing a part ended by depriving his mind of
all its strength. As he crossed each night the immense court-
yard of the hotel de Fervaques, it was only through sheer force
in character and logic that he succeeded in keeping a little
above the level of despair.

" I overcame despair at the seminary," he said, " yet what
an awful prospect I had then. I was then either going to make
my fortune or come to grief just as I am now. I found my-

426 THE RED AND THE BLACK

self obliged to pass all my life in intimate association with the
most contemptible and disgusting things in the whole world.
The following spring, just eleven short months later, I was
perhaps the happiest of all young people of my own age."

But very often all this fine logic proved unavailing against
the awful reality. He saw Mathilde every day at breakfast and
at dinner. He knew from the numerous letters which de la
Mole dictated to him that she was on the eve of marrying de
Croisenois. This charming man already called twice a day at
the hdtel de la Mole; the jealous eye of a jilted lover was
alive to every one of his movements. When he thought he
had noticed that mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to
encourage her intended, Julien could not help looking tenderly
at his pistols as he went up to his room.

" Ah," he said to himself, " would it not be much wiser to
take the marks out of my linen and to go into some solitary
forest twenty leagues from Paris to put an end to this atrocious
life ? I should be unknown in the district, my death would
remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would bother about
me after a fortnight ? "

This reasoning was very logical. But on the following day
a glimpse of Mathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress
and her glove sufficed to plunge our young philosopher into
memories which, though agonising, none the less gave him a
hold on life. " Well," he said to himself, " I will follow this
Russian plan to the end. How will it all finish ? "

" So far as the marechale is concerned, after I have copied
out these fifty-three letters, I shall not write any others.

" As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either
leave her anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of
reconciliation. Great God ! I should die of happiness."
And he could not finish his train of thought.

After a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread
of his argument. " In that case," he said to himself, " I should
win one day of happiness, and after that her cruelties which
are based, alas, on my lack of ability to please her will
recommence. I should have nothing left to do, I should be
ruined and lost for ever. With such a character as hers what
guarantee can she give me ? Alas ! My manners are no doubt
lacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and
monotonous. Great God, why am I myself?"

CHAPTER LIX

ENNUI

Sacrificing one's self to one's passions, let it pass ; but
sacrificing one's self to passions which one has not got !
Oh ! melancholy nineteenth century !

Girodet.

Madame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long
letters without any pleasure, but she now began to think about
them ; one thing, however, grieved her. " What a pity that
M. Sorel was not a real priest ! He could then be admitted
to a kind of intimacy ; but in view of that cross, and that
almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what is
one to answer?" She did not finish the train of thought,
" Some malicious woman friend may think, and even spread it
about that he is some lower middle-class cousin or other, a
relative of my father, some tradesman who has been decorated
by the National Guard." Up to the time which she had seen
Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure had been
writing the word marechale after her name. Consequently a
morbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at
everything, combatted the awakening of her interest in him.
" It would be so easy for me," said the marechale, " to make
him a grand vicar in some diocese near Paris ! but plain M.
Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the secretary of M.
de la Mole ! It is heart-breaking."

For the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of
everything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its
own pretensions to rank and superiority. Her old porter
noticed that whenever he brought a letter from this handsome
young man, who always looked so sad, he was certain to see
that absent, discontented expression, which the marechale

428 THE RED AND THE BLACK

always made a point of assuming on the entry of any of her
servants, immediately disappear. The boredom of a mode of
life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the
public without her having at heart any real faculty of enjoy-
ment for that kind of success, had become so intolerable since
she had begun to think of Julien that, all that was necessary
to prevent her chambermaids being bullied for a whole day,
was that their mistress should have passed an hour in the society
of this strange young man on the evening of the preceding
day. His budding credit was proof against very cleverly
written anonymous letters. It was in vain that Tanbeau
supplied M. de Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three
very clever calumnies which these gentlemen were only too
glad to spread, without making too many enquiries of the
actual truth of the charges. The marechale, whose tempera-
ment was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar
expedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always
consoled by her.

One day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times
if there were any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer
Julien. It was a case of the triumph of ennui. On reaching
the second letter in his name the marechale almost felt herself
pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness of writing with her own
hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care of M. le
Marquis de la Mole.

" You must bring me envelopes with your address on," she
said very drily to Julien in the evening. " Here I am appointed
lover and valet in one," thought Julien, and he bowed, amused
himself by wrinkling his face up like Arsene, the old valet of
the marquis.

He brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received
the third letter very early on the following day : he read five
or six lines at the beginning, and two or three towards the end.
There were four pages of a small and very close writing. The
lady gradually developed the sweet habit of writing nearly every
day. Julien answered by faithful copies of the Russian letters ;
and such is the advantage of the bombastic style that madame
de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by the lack of connec-
tion between his answers and her letters. How gravely
irritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who
had constituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's move-

ENNUI 429

ments had been able to have informed her that all these letters
were left unsealed and thrown haphazard into Julien's drawer.

One morning the porter was bringing into the library a
letter to him from the marechale. Mathilde met the man, saw
the letter together with the address in Julien's handwriting.
She entered the library as the porter was leaving it, the letter
was still on the edge of the table. Julien was very busy with
his work and had not yet put it in his drawer.

" I cannot endure this," exclaimed Mathilde, as she took
possession of the letter, "you are completely forgetting me,
me your wife, your conduct is awful, monsieur."

At these words her pride, shocked by the awful unseem-
liness of her proceeding, prevented her from speaking. She
burst into tears, and soon seemed to Julien scarcely able to
breathe.

Julien was so surprised and embarrassed that he did not
fully appreciate how ideally fortunate this scene was for
himself. He helped Mathilde to sit down ; she almost
abandoned herself in his arms.

The first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt
an extreme joy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of
Korasoff : " I may lose everything by a single word."

The strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his
arms stiffened. " I dare not even allow myself to press this
supple, charming frame to my heart, or she will despise me or
treat me badly. What an awful character ! " And while he
cursed Mathilde's character, he loved her a hundred times
more. He thought he had a queen in his arms.

Julien's impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride
which was lacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole.
She was far from having the necessary self-possession to try
and read in his eyes what he felt for her at that particular
moment. She could not make up her mind to look at him.
She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous
expression.

Seated motionless on the library divan, with her head
turned in the opposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to
the most poignant anguish that pride and love can inflict upon
a human soul. What an awful step had she just slipped into
taking ! " It has been reserved for me, unhappy woman that
I am, to see my most unbecoming advances rebuffed ! and

43Q THE RED AND THE BLACK

rebuffed by whom?" added her maddened and wounded
pride; "rebuffed by a servant of my father's! That's more
than I will put up with," she said aloud, and rising in a fury,
she opened the drawer of Julien's table, which was two yards
in front of her.

She stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten
unopened letters, completely like the one the porter had just
brought up. She recognised Julien's handwriting, though
more or less disguised, on all the addresses.

" So," she cried, quite beside herself, " you are not only on
good terms with her, but you actually despise her. You, a
nobody, despise madame la marechale de Fervaques ! "

" Oh, forgive me, my dear," she added, throwing herself on
her knees ; " despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot
live without your love." And she fell down in a dead faint.

"So our proud lady is lying at my feet," said Julien to
himself.

CHAPTER LX

A BOX AT THE BOUFFES

As the blackest sky
Foretells the heaviest tempest

Don Juan, c. I. st. 76.

In the midst of these great transports Julien felt more
surprised than happy. Mathilde's abuse proved to him the
shrewdness of the Russian tactics. " ' Few words, few
deeds,' that is my one method of salvation." He picked up
Mathilde, and without saying a word, put her back on the
divan. She was gradually being overcome by tears.

In order to keep herself in countenance, she took madame
de Fervaques' letters in her hands, and slowly broke the seals.
She gave a noticeable nervous movement when she recognised
the marechale's handwriting. She turned over the pages of
these letters without reading them. Most of them were six
pages.

"At least answer me," Mathilde said at last, in the most
supplicatory tone, but without daring to look at Julien : " You
know how proud I am. It is the misfortune of my position,
and of my temperament, too, I confess. Has madame de
Fervaques robbed me of your heart? Has she made the
sacrifices to which my fatal love swept me ? "

A dismal silence was all Julien's answer. " By what right,"
he thought, "does she ask me to commit an indiscretion
unworthy of an honest man?" Mathilde tried to read the
letters ; her eyes were so wet with tears that it was impossible
for her to do so. She had been unhappy for a month past,
but this haughty soul had been very far from owning its own
feelings even to itself. Chance alone had brought about this
explosion. For one instant jealousy and love had won a

432 THE RED AND THE BLACK

victory over pride. She was sitting on the divan, and very
near him. He saw her hair and her alabaster neck. For a
moment he forgot all he owed to himself. He passed his arm
around her waist, and clasped her almost to his breast.

She slowly turned her head towards him. He was astonished
by the extreme anguish in her eyes. There was not a trace
of their usual expression.

Julien felt his strength desert him. So great was the deadly
pain of the courageous feat which he was imposing on himself.

"Those eyes will soon express nothing but the coldest
disdain," said Julien to himself, " if I allow myself to be swept
away by the happiness of loving her." She, however, kept
repeatedly assuring him at this moment, in a hushed voice,
and in words which she had scarcely the strength to finish, of
all her remorse for those steps which her inordinate pride had
dictated.

" I, too, have pride," said Julien to her, in a scarcely
articulate voice, while his features portrayed the lowest depths
of physical prostration.

Mathilde turned round sharply towards him. Hearing his
voice was a happiness which she had given up hoping. At
this moment her only thought of her haughtiness was to curse
it. She would have liked to have found out some abnormal
and incredible actions, in order to prove to him the extent to
which she adored him and detested herself.

" That pride is probably the reason," continued Julien,
" why you singled me out for a moment. My present
courageous and manly firmness is certainly the reason why
you respect me. I may entertain love for the marechale."

Mathilde shuddered ; a strange expression came into her
eyes. She was going to hear her sentence pronounced. This
shudder did not escape Julien. He felt his courage weaken.

" Ah," he said to himself, as he listened to the sound of the
vain words which his mouth was articulating, as he thought it
were some strange sound, " if I could only cover those pale
cheeks with kisses without your feeling it."

" I may entertain love for the marechale," he continued,
while his voice became weaker and weaker, " but I certainly
have no definite proof of her interest in me."

Mathilde looked at him. He supported that look. He
hoped, at anynate, that his expression had not betrayed him.

A BOX AT THE BOUFFES 433

He felt himself bathed in a love that penetrated even into the
most secret recesses of his heart. He had never adored her
so much ; he was almost as mad as Mathilde. If she had
mustered sufficient self-possession and courage to manoeuvre,
he would have abandoned all his play-acting, and fallen at her
feet. He had sufficient strength to manage to continue
speaking : " Ah, Korasoff," he exclaimed mentally, " why are
you not here ? How I need a word from you to guide me in
my conduct." During this time his voice was saying,

"In default of any other sentiment, gratitude would be
sufficient to attach me to the marechale. She has been
indulgent to me ; she has consoled me when I have been
despised. I cannot put unlimited faith in certain appearances
which are, no doubt, extremely flattering, but possibly very
fleeting."

" Oh, my God ! " exclaimed Mathilde.

u Well, what guarantee will you give me ? " replied Julien
with a sharp, firm intonation, which seemed to abandon for a
moment the prudent forms of diplomacy. " What guarantee,
what god will warrant that the position to which you seem
inclined to restore me at the present moment will last more
than two days ? "

" The excess of my love, and my unhappiness if you do not
love me," she said to him, taking his hands and turning
towards him.

The spasmodic movement which she had just made had
slightly displaced her tippet; Julien caught a view of her
charming shoulders. Her slightly dishevelled hair recalled a
delicious memory. . . .

He was on the point of succumbing. " One imprudent
word," he said to himself, " and I have to start all over again
that long series of days which I have passed in despair.
Madame de Renal used to find reasons for doing what her
heart dictated. This young girl of high society never allows
her heart to be moved except when she has proved to herself
by sound logic that it ought to be moved."

He saw this proof in the twinkling of an eye, and in the
twinkling of an eye too, he regained his courage. He took
away his hands which Mathilde was pressing in her own, and
moved a little away from her with a marked respect.

Human courage could not go further. He then busied

28

434 THE RED AND THE BLACK

himself with putting together madame de Fervaque's letters
which were spread out on the divan, and it was with all the
appearance of extreme politeness that he cruelly exploited the
psychological moment by adding,

" Mademoiselle de la Mole will allow me to reflect over all
this." He went rapidly away and left the library ; she heard
him shut all the doors one after the other.

"The monster is not the least bit troubled," she said to
herself. " But what am I saying ? Monster ? He is wise,
prudent, good. It is I myself who have committed more
wrong than one can imagine."

This point of view lasted. Mathilde was almost happy to-
day, for she gave herself up to love unreservedly. One would
have said that this soul had never been disturbed by pride
(and what pride !)

She shuddered with horror when a lackey announced
madame le Fervaques into the salon in the evening. The
man's voice struck her as sinister. She could not endure the
sight of the marechale, and stopped suddenly. Julien who
had felt little pride over his painful victory, had feared to face
her, and had not dined at the hotel de la Mole.

His love and his happiness rapidly increased in proportion
to the time that elapsed from the moment of the battle. He
was blaming himself already. " How could I resist her?" he
said to himself. "Suppose she were to go and leave off
loving me ! One single moment may change that haughty
soul, and I must admit that I have treated her awfully."

In the evening he felt that it was absolutely necessary to
put in an appearance at the Bouffes in madame de Fervaques'
box. She had expressly invited him. Mathilde would be
bound to know of his presence or his discourteous absence.
In spite of the clearness of this logic, he could not at the
beginning of the evening bring himself to plunge into society.
By speaking he would lose half his happiness. Ten o'clock
struck and it was absolutely necessary to show himself.
Luckily he found the marechale's box packed with women, and
was relegated to a place near the door where he was completely
hidden by the hats. This position saved him from looking
ridiculous ; Caroline's divine notes of despair in the Alatrimonio
Segreto made him burst into tears. Madame de Fervaques
saw these tears. They represented so great a contrast with

A BOX AT THE BOUFFES 435

the masculine firmness of his usual expression that the soul of
the old-fashioned lady, saturated as it had been for many years
with all the corroding acid of parvenu haughtiness, was none
the less touched. Such remnants of a woman's heart as she
still possessed impelled her to speak : she wanted to enjoy the
sound of his voice at this moment.

" Have you seen the de la Mole ladies ? " she said to him.
" They are in the third tier." Julien immediately craned out
over the theatre, leaning politely enough on the front of the
box. He saw Mathilde ; her eyes were shining with tears.

" And yet it is not their Opera day," thought Julien ; " how
eager she must be ! "

Mathilde had prevailed on her mother to come to the
Bouffes in spite of the inconveniently high tier of the box,
which a lady friend of the family had hastened to offer her.
She wanted to see if Julien would pass the evening with the
marechale.

CHAPTER LXI

FRIGHTEN HER

So this is the fine miracle of your civilisation ; you have,
turned love into an ordinary business. Bat nave.

Julien rushed into madame de la Mole's box. His eyes
first met the tearful eyes of Mathilde ; she was crying without
reserve. There were only insignificant personages present,
the friend who had leant her box, and some men whom she
knew. Mathilde placed her hand on Julien's ; she seemed to
have forgotten all fear of her mother. Almost stifled as she
was by her tears, she said nothing but this one word :
" Guarantees ! "

" So long as I don't speak to her," said Julien to himself.
He was himself very moved, and concealed his eyes with his
hand as best he could under the pretext of avoiding the dazzling
light of the third tier of boxes. " If I speak she may suspect
the excess of my emotion, the sound of my voice will betray
me. All may yet be lost. His struggles were more painful
than they had been in the morning, his soul had had the time
to become moved. He had been frightened at seeing
Mathilde piqued with vanity. Intoxicated as he was with love
and pleasure he resolved not to speak.

In my view this is one of the finest traits in his character,
an individual capable of such an effort of self-control may go
far si fata sinant.

Mademoiselle de la Mole insisted on taking Julien back to
the hotel. Luckily it was raining a great deal, but the
marquise had him placed opposite her, talked to him in-
cessantly, and prevented him saying a single word to her
daughter. One might have thought that the marquise was
nursing Julien's happiness for him \ no longer fearing to lose

FRIGHTEN HER 437

everything through his excessive emotion, he madly abandoned
himself to his happiness.

Shall I dare to say that when he went back to his room
Julien fell on his knees and covered with kisses the love letters
which prince Korasoff had given him.

" How much I owe you, great man," he exclaimed in his
madness. Little by little he regained his self-possession. He
compared himself to a general who had just won a great battle.
" My advantage is definite and immense," he said to himself,
" but what will happen to-morrow ? One instant may ruin
everything."

With a passionate gesture he opened the Memoirs which
Napoleon had dictated at St. Helena and for two long hours
forced himself to read them. Only his eyes read ; no matter,
he made himself do it. During this singular reading his head
and his heart rose to the most exalted level and worked un-
consciously. " Her heart is very different from madame de
Renal's," he said to himself, but he did not go further.

" Frighten her ! " he suddenly exclaimed, hurling away the
book. " The enemy will only obey me in so far as I frighten
him, but then he will not dare to show contempt for me."

Intoxicated with joy he walked up and down his little room.
In point of fact his happiness was based rather on pride than
on love.

" Frighten her ! " he repeated proudly, and he had cause to
be proud.

" Madame de Renal always doubted even in her happiest
moments if my love was equal to her own. In this case I
have to subjugate a demon, consequently I must subjugate
her." He knew quite well that Mathilde would be in the
library at eight o'clock in the morning of the following day.
He did not appear before nine o'clock. He was burning with
love, but his head dominated his heart.

Scarcely a single minute passed without his repeating to
himself. " Keep her obsessed by this great doubt. Does he
love me ? " Her own brilliant position, together with the
flattery of all who speak to her, tend a little too much to make
her reassure herself.

He found her sitting on the divan pale and calm, but
apparently completely incapable of making a single movement.
She held out her hand,

438 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are
angry with me."

Julien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on
the point of betraying himself.

" You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence
which she had hoped would be broken. Take me away, let
us leave for London. I shall be ruined, dishonoured for
ever." She had the courage to take her hand away from
Julien to cover her eyes with it.

All her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come
back into her soul. " Well, dishonour me," she said at last
with a sigh, " that will be a guarantee."

" I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be
severe with myself," thought Julien. After a short silence he
had sufficient control over his heart to say in an icy tone,

"Once we are on the road to London, once you are
dishonoured, to employ your own expression, who will answer
that you will still love me ? that my very presence in the post-
chaise will not seem importunate? I am not a monster; to
have ruined your reputation will only make me still more
unhappy. It is not your position in society which is the
obstacle, it is unfortunately your own character. Can you
yourself guarantee that you will love me for eight days ? "

" Ah ! let her love me for eight days, just eight days,"
whispered Julien to himself, "and I will die of happiness.
What do I care for the future, what do I care for life ? And
yet if I wish that divine happiness can commence this very
minute, it only depends on me."

Mathild saw that he was pensive.

" So I am completely unworthy of you," she said to him,
taking his hand.

Julien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of
duty gripped his heart. If she sees how much I adore her I
shall lose her. And before leaving her arms, he had reassumed
all that dignity which is proper to a man.

He managed on this and the following days to conceal his
inordinate happiness. There were moments when he even
refused himself the pleasure of clasping her in his arms. At
other times the delirium of happiness prevailed over all the
counsels of prudence.

He had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of

FRIGHTEN HER 439

honeysuckle in the garden arranged in such a way so as to
conceal the ladder when he had looked up at Mathilde's
blind in the distance, and lamented her inconstancy. A very
big oak tree was quite near, and the trunk of that tree
prevented him from being seen by the indiscreet.

As he passed with Mathilde over this very place which
recalled his excessive unhappiness so vividly, the contrast
between his former despair and his present happiness proved
too much for his character. Tears inundated his eyes, and
he carried his sweetheart's hand to his lips : "It was here I
used to live in my thoughts of you, it was from here that I
used to look at that blind, and waited whole hours for the
happy moment when I would see that hand open it."

His weakness was unreserved. He portrayed the extremity
of his former despair in genuine colours which could not
possibly have been invented. Short interjections testified
to that present happiness which had put an end to that
awful agony.

" My God, what am I doing ? " thought Julien, suddenly
recovering himself. " I am ruining myself."

In his excessive alarm he thought that he already detected
a diminution of the love in mademoiselle de la Mole's eyes.
It was an illusion, but Julien's face suddenly changed its
expression and became overspread by a mortal pallor. His
eyes lost their fire, and an expression of haughtiness touched
with malice soon succeeded to his look of the most genuine
and unreserved love.

" But what is the matter with you, my dear," said Mathilde
to him, both tenderly and anxiously.

" I am lying," said Julien irritably, " and I am lying to you.
I am reproaching myself for it, and yet God knows that I
respect you sufficiently not to lie to you. You love me, you
are devoted to me, and I have no need of praises in order to
please you."

" Great heavens ! are all the charming things you have been
telling me for the last two minutes mere phrases ? "

" And I reproach myself for it keenly, dear one. I once
made them up for a woman who loved me, and bored me it
is the weakness of my character. I denounce myself to you,
forgive me."

Bitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks.

440 THE RED AND THE BLACK

" As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on
my meditation," continued Julien, " my abominable memory,
which I curse at this very minute, offers me a resource, and I
abuse it."

"So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some
action which has displeased you," said Mathilde with a
charming simplicity.

" I remember one day that when you passed near this
honeysuckle you picked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you
and you let him keep it. I was two paces away."

" M. de Luz? It is impossible," replied Mathilde with all
her natural haughtiness. " I do not do things like that."

" I am sure of it," Julien replied sharply.

"Well, my dear, it is true," said Mathilde, as she sadly
lowered her eyes. She knew positively that many months had
elapsed since she had allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing.

Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, " No," he
said to himself, " she does not love me less."

In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for
madame de Fervaques. "Think of a bourgeois loving a
parvenu, those are perhaps the only type of hearts that my
Julien cannot make mad with love. She has made you into
a real dandy," she said playing with his hair.

During the period when he thought himself scorned by
Mathilde, Julien had become one of the best dressed men in
Paris. He had, moreover, a further advantage over other
dandies, in as much as once he had finished dressing he never
gave a further thought to his appearance.

One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy
out the Russian letters and send them to the marechale.

CHAPTER LXII

THE TIGER

Alas, why these things and not other things? Beaitmarchais.

An English traveller tells of the intimacy in which he lived
with a tiger. He had trained it and would caress it, but he
always kept a cocked pistol on his table.

Julien only abandoned himself to the fulness of his
happiness in those moments when Mathilde could not read
the expression in his eyes. He scrupulously performed his
duty of addressing some harsh word to her from time to time.

When Mathiide's sweetness, which he noticed with some
surprise, together with the completeness of her devotion were
on the point of depriving him of all self-control, he was
courageous enough to leave her suddenly.

Mathilde loved for the first time in her life.

Life had previously always dragged along at a tortoise pace,
but now it flew.

As, however, her pride required to find a vent in some way
or other, she wished to expose herself to all the dangers in which
her love could involve her. It was Julien who was prudent,
and it was only when it was a question of danger that she did
not follow her own inclination ; but submissive, and almost
humble as she was when with him, she only showed additional
haughtiness to everyone in the house who came near her,
whether relatives or friends.

In the evening she would call Julien to her in the salon
in the presence of sixty people, and have a long and private
conversation with him.

The little Tanbeau installed himself one day close to them.
She requested him to go and fetch from the library the

442 THE RED AND THE BLACK

volume of Smollet which deals with the revolution of 1688,
and when he hesitated, added with an expression of insulting
haughtiness, which was a veritable balm to Julien's soul,
" Don't hurry."

" Have you noticed that little monster's expression ? " he
said to her.

" His uncle has been in attendance in this salon for ten or
twelve years, otherwise I would have had him packed off
immediately."

Her behaviour towards MM. de Croisenois, de Luz, etc.,
though outwardly perfectly polite, was in reality scarcely less
provocative. Mathilde keenly reproached herself for all the
confidential remarks about them which she had formerly made
to Julien, and all the more so since she did not dare to confess
that she had exaggerated to him the, in fact, almost absolutely-
innocent manifestations of interest of which these gentlemen
had been the objects. In spite of her best resolutions her
womanly pride invariably prevented her from saying to Julien,
" It was because I was talking to you that I found a pleasure
in describing my weakness in not drawing my hand away,
when M. de Croisenois had placed his on a marble table and
had just touched it."

But now, as soon as one of these gentlemen had been
speaking to her for some moments, she found she had a
question to put to Julien, and she made this an excuse for
keeping him by her side.

She discovered that she was enceinte and joyfully informed
Julien of the fact.

" Do you doubt me now ? Is it not a guarantee ? I am
your wife for ever."

This announcement struck Julien with profound astonish-
ment. He was on the point of forgetttng the governing
principle of his conduct. How am I to be deliberately cold
and insulting towards this poor young girl, who is ruining
herself for my sake. And if she looked at all ill, he could not,
even on those days when the terrible voice of wisdom made
itself heard, find the courage to address to her one of those
harsh remarks which his experience had found so indispensable
to the preservation of their love.

" I will write to my father," said Mathilde to him one day,
" he is more than a father to me, he is a friend ; that being

THE TIGER 443

so, I think it unworthy both of you and of myself to try and
deceive him, even for a single minute."

"Great heavens, what are you going to do?" said Julien
in alarm.

" My duty," she answered with eyes shining with joy.

She thought she was showing more nobility than her lover.

" But he will pack me off in disgrace."

" It is his right to do so, we must respect it. I will give
you my arm, and we will go out by the front door in full
daylight."

Julien was thunderstruck and requested her to put it off for
a week.

" I cannot," she answered, " it is the voice of honour, I
have seen my duty, I must follow it, and follow it at
once."

"Well, I order you to put it off," said Julien at last.
" Your honour is safe for the present. I am your husband.
The position of us will be changed by this momentous step. I
too am within my rights. To-day is Tuesday, next Tuesday
is the duke de Retz's at home ; when M. de la Mole comes
home in the evening the porter will give him the fatal letter.
His only thought is to make you a duchess, I am sure of it.
Think of his unhappiness."

" You mean, think of his vengeance? "

" It may be that I pity my benefactor, and am grieved at
injuring him, but I do not fear, and shall never fear anyone."

Mathilde yielded. This was the first occasion, since she
had informed Julien of her condition, that he had spo\en to
her authoritatively. She had never loved him so much.
The tender part of his soul had found happiness in seizing
on Mathilde's condition as an excuse for refraining from his
cruel remarks to her. The question of the confession to
M. de la Mole deeply moved him. Was he going to be
separated from Mathilde? And, however grieved she would
be to see him go, would she have a thought for him after his
departure ?

He was almost equally horrified by the thought of the
justified reproaches which the marquis might address to him.

In the evening he confessed to Mathilde the second reason
for his anxiety, and then led away by his love, confessed the
first as well.

444 TI1E RED AND THE BLACK

She changed colour. " Would it really make you unhappy,"
she said to him, "to pass six months far away from me?"

"Infinitely so. It is the only thing in the world which
terrifies me."

Mathilde was very happy. Julien had played his part so
assiduously that he had succeeded in making her think that
she was the one of the two who loved the more.

The fatal Tuesday arrived. When the marquis came in at
midnight he found a letter addressed to him, which was only
to be opened himself when no one was there :

" My father,

"All social ties have been broken between us, only
those of nature remain. Next to my husband, you are and
always will be the being I shall always hold most dear. My eyes
are full of tears, I am thinking of the pain that I am causing you,
but if my shame was to be prevented from becoming public, and you
were to be given time to reflect and act, I could not postpone any
longer the confession that I owe you. If your affection for me,
which I know is extremely deep, is good enough to grant me a
small allowance, I will go and settle with my husband anywhere
you like, in Switzerland, for instance. His name is so obscure that
no one would recognize in Madame Sorel, the daughter-in-law of a
Verrieres' carpenter, your daughter. That is the name which I
have so much difficulty in writing. I fear your wrath against Julien,
it seems so justified. I shall not be a duchess, my father ; but I
knew it when I loved him ; for I was the one who loved him first,
it was I who seduced him. I have inherited from you too lofty a
soul to fix my attention on what either is or appears to be vulgar.
It is in vain that I thought of M. Croisenois with a view to pleasing
you. Why did you place real merit under my eyes ? You told me
yourself on my return from Hyeres, ' that young Sorel is the one
person who amuses me,' the poor boy is as grieved as I am if it is
possible, at the pain this letter will give you. I cannot prevent you
being irritated as a father, but love me as a friend.

" Julien respected me. If he sometimes spoke to me, it was only
by reason of his deep gratitude towards yourself, for the natural
dignity of his character induces him to keep to his official capacity
in any answers he may make to anyone who is so much above him.
He has a keen and instinctive appreciation of the difference of
social rank. It was I (I confess it with a blush to my best friend,
and I shall never make such a confession to anyone else) who
clasped his arm one day in the garden.

" Why need you be irritated with him, after twenty-four hours
have elapsed ? My own lapse is irreparable. If you insist on it,
the assurance of his profound respect and of bis desperate grief at

THE TIGER 445

having displeased you, can be conveyed to you through me. You
need not see him at all, but I shall go and join him wherever he
wishes. It is his right and it is my duty. He is the father of my
child. If your kindness will go so far as to grant us six thousand
francs to live on, I will receive it with gratitude ; if not, Julien
reckons on establishing himself at Besancon, where he will set up
as a Latin and literature master. However low may have been the
station from which he springs, I am certain he will raise himself.
With him I do not fear obscurity. If there is a revolution, I am
sure that he will play a prime part. Can you say as much for any
of those who have asked for my hand ? They have fine estates,
you say. I cannot consider that circumstance a reason for
admiring them. My Julien would attain a high position, even
under the present regime, if he had a million and my father's
protection. . . ."

Mathilde, who knew that the marquis was a man who always
abandoned himself to his first impulse, had written eight
pages.

"What am I to do?" said Julien to himself while M. de
la Mole was reading this letter. " Where is (first) my duty ;
(second) my interest ? My debt to him is immense. Without
him I should have been a menial scoundrel, and not even
enough of a scoundrel to be hated and persecuted by the
others. He has made me a man of the world. The
villainous acts which I now have to do are (first) less frequent ;
(second) less mean. That is more than as if he had given me
a million. I am indebted to him for this cross and the
reputation of having rendered those alleged diplomatic services,
which have lifted me out of the ruck.

" If he himself were writing instructions for my conduct,
what would he prescribe ? "

Julien was sharply interrupted by M. de la Mole's old
valet. " The marquis wants to see you at once, dressed or
not dressed." The valet added in a low voice, as he walked
by Julien's side, "He is beside himself: look out!"

CHAPTER LXIII

THE HELL OF WEAKNESS

A clumsy lapidary, in cutting this diamond, deprived
it of some of its most brilliant facets. In the middle
ages, nay, even under Richelieu, the Frenchman had
force ofivill. Mirabeau,

Julien found the marquis furious. For perhaps the first time
in his life this nobleman showed bad form. He loaded Julien
with all the insults that came to his lips. Our hero was
astonished, and his patience was tried, but his gratitude
remained unshaken.

"The poor man now sees the annihilation, in a single
minute, of all the fine plans which he has long cherished in
his heart. But I owe it to him to answer. My silence tends
to increase his anger." The part of Tartuffe supplied the
answer

" I am not an angel. ... I served you well ; you paid
me generously. ... I was grateful, but I am twenty-
two. . . . Only you and that charming person understood
my thoughts in this household."

" Monster," exclaimed the marquis. " Charming ! Charming,
to be sure ! The day when you found her charming you ought
to have fled."

" I tried to. It was then that I asked permission to leave
for Languedoc."

Tired of stampeding about and overcome by his grief, the
marquis threw himself into an arm-chair. Julien heard him
whispering to himself, " No, no, he is not a wicked man."

" No, I am not, towards you," exclaimed Julien, falling on
his knees. But he felt extremely ashamed of this manifesta-
tion, and very quickly got up again.

THE HELL OF WEAKNESS 447

The marquis was really transported. When he saw this
movement, he began again to load him with abominable
insults, which were worthy of the driver of a fiacre. The
novelty of these oaths perhaps acted as a distraction.

" What ! is my daughter to go by the name of madame
Sorel ? What ! is my daughter not to be a duchess ? " Each
time that these two ideas presented themselves in all their
clearness M. de la Mole was a prey to torture, and lost all
power over the movements of his mind.

Julien was afraid of being beaten.

In his lucid intervals, when he was beginning to get
accustomed to his unhappiness, the marquis addressed to
Julien reproaches which were reasonable enough. " You
should have fled, sir," he said to him. " Your duty was to
flee. You are the lowest of men."

Julien approached the table and wrote :

" I have found my life unbearable for a long time ; I am putting
an end to it. I request monsieur the marquis to accept my
apologies (together with the expression of my infinite gratitude)
for any embarrassment that may be occasioned by my death in
his hotel."

" Kindly run your eye over this paper, M. the marquis,"
said Julien. " Kill me, or have me killed by your valet. It
is one o'clock in the morning. I will go and walk in the
garden in the direction of the wall at the bottom."

" Go to the devil," cried the marquis, as he went away.

" I understand," thought Julien. " He would not be sorry
if I were to spare his valet the trouble of killing me. . . .

"Let him kill me, if he likes; it is a satisfaction which I
offer him. . . . But, by heaven, I love life. I owe it to
my son."

This